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Show I AGRICULTURE I I This Department is Edited by Prof. J. C. Hogcnson, of the Agricultural Ag-ricultural College. j THE IMPORTANCE OF PROPER MANAGEMENT. By Prof. J. W. Sanborn of New Hampshire. The measure of the production of an agricultural people is never the fertility of the soil, but the fertility of the intellect of those who till that soil. We should not live as guests of nature. Nature never meant that man should lean on her and repels it by dwarfing himi as an intellectual force and in the- measure of his living. I have yet to learn of a people living on a very fertile soil who have not in the end suffered by that very fertility. fer-tility. STIic second clement of importance in the management of a farm is the permanency of the family on the farm. No agriculture will be at its best, and no state at its greatest J1 for "a generation, or generations, in whose farm families do not root back the soil held, that docs not bud in present occupancy and in expectation to flower in genet ations to come. Something of the life of the fathers is in the homes and improvements of the farm, and the spirit of their encouragement en-couragement is at the home portals and hovers around the family fireside. fire-side. No other accupation gives any security for family permanency and the certainty of social -equality, of physical, moral and intellectual vigor and of material independence. Anchor An-chor the family to the soil and in this immortality in the family line find the encouragement for permanent improvements. im-provements. Every drain, all increment incre-ment ofl fertility and of crop yields, better buildings, landscape improvements improve-ments bordering around them, the creation of a home of refinement ars ibut the best forms of heritage. Such a farm still compels action, while inherited in-herited money is an opiate to the energies. The camp or tent farmer, who values the farm for only what he can extort for use in the pleasure of a retired life in town is not a constructive construc-tive farmer, a dcspoilcr of land and buildings, lie is an enemy to the higher interests of society and of his family. The tenant system now coming com-ing into vogue is the menace of west- mlrfi lilAiMiiii iMmtAm mMtmmAd crn agriculture. The tenant is not the stuff out of which evolves a great agriculture, and a great state as incentive in-centive is wanting. In my own farm has been absorbed much of the lives of my ancestors back to the woods from which one of them wrung it. It is to memory dear. Sentiment holds me to it, and out of it I am determined to evolve a farm in scops and character adequate to maintain a sturdy and cultivated racc of men and women. I know of no way to serve the family and the state better Our farm management should align itself up to the very hair with all those modern forces and their results that characterize, the twentieth century. cen-tury. What especially marks the industrial in-dustrial life of this century? Two things its depth and breadth. Science and art in other industries exhaust themselves in the effort to secure all the possibilities that lie in each unit handled, and to handle all the units possible. Witness the great economics introduced into the manufacturing manu-facturing enterprises and the saving of that which but yesterday was waste. The profit per unit turned out is today less than ever before in his- tory, yet great profits and a high or H costly plane of living is secured H through the vast volume of units H turned out. Scanning the decades, H we find that the arts resting on the free use of mechanism arc selling H their products at constantly decrcas'- H ing costs, amounting in many cases. H to but a mere fraction of old-time hand craft rates. On our part as farmers, in an age of great captains H of industry, we follow the bugle notes H of small farming, and arc .ever selling H crops at advancing rates. We buy H for less, sell at Higher rates and com-- H plain that farming docs not pay. Our boys seek the town, both in the cast H and the west, for broader opportuni- tics. These boys will not and should H not remain on the farm until it can be made to yield the -cultivated living' H secured by the better class of indus- H trialists . of our day and find in the farm opportunities for mental activity H and recognition common to those in H dustrics requiring intelligence anU H capital. & .H When thirteen nearly fourteen- H years ago my father's hands began to wM drop by his side, I had to decide H (Continued on page 30.) H I 1- flORlCULTURE H the- importance of proper H MANAGEMENT, H (Continued from page 3a) H1 whether I should still be led by the H boy's dream and take up the thread H off lffe again on a granite hill farm of H afback, railroadlcss town, four and H cftelalf miles from a railroad and' fif- H tccrilmilcs from any market. In cigh- Hi teenf years of absence the farm) had H- g5nc' badly to bushes and woods and Hj its bmldings to decay. No field would H cut a ton of hay many would not cut H more than one-fourth to one-tenth H ton to the acre. None of the land Hi was under the plow. Farms around Hij . it Were selling at $10 per acre, a mere Hi fraction of the tost of improvcmcntJ Hj on them. A meager living for hard Hf work was had out of them. The avcr- H'' age farm was not giving over from Hi $500 to $700 income, out of which all H expenses of labor, grain, teams, taxes, H repairs and living must come. H This was the history of back farms H in New England, where mine was lo- H catcd, and was the history for large Hj areas, but riot always true of locations H near cities. I dropped a good salary H' as a college president and staked the H family fortunes, where others had H lost, on the belief that first, iby com- H bining intelligently science with art; H secondly, the sacrificing of the prcs- H nt to the Suture, both in the interest H of the latter days of life and the future H Wc f tnc family, "and thirdly, a deep- H cr and broader farming, or In intcn- H svc an( extensive farming, would H justify the change. H I usc a rotation of eight years in H which every tillable acre is manured H every year, and all the acres together Hi are on the up grade each year. On H tnc second round of a farm in fair H condition at the start, my farm was H' exhausted, economically speaking, the HJ crops should be as follows: Eight H -acres of corn for silage, treated with B ten. tons manure and 600 pound's H chemicals, in air dry, equivalent; B eight acres oats and Canada peas, treuted with 600 pounds chemical fcr- B tilizers per acre; eight acres in clover, H treated with 500 pounds Tniineral m chemicals; eight acres potatoes, H treated with eight tons chemical fer- H tilizers, 2,oo( bushels at 60 cents; H eiglj aciiqs BJungariun andKQni,grart H aropjMrea'teaviflJrtenftSnyard' nfa- fc IIMMMMM. IIMllll I I .., ... f J nurc, eight acres timothy treated with 500 pounds chemical fertilizers, twenty-four tons at $18; eight -acres timothy timo-thy treated with 500 pounds chemical fertilizers, twenty-four tons at $18; eight acres pasture, treated with 500 pounds chemical fertilizers. One hundred and twenty tons- hay, 15 per cent shrinkage in the mow and work stock supply out will keep forty-five cows. These, in my back town, eighty-five miles from Boston, will give $100 per cow for milk for Boston market, by good feeding, or $4,500, or a total cash income of $6,564, aside from house, orchard and garden in come. Petite low pressure farming with hopeless incomes give way at once to one of possibilities. Forty dollars per arable acre should pay all costs. The new farming is one of greater intellectual motion and elevates the social status of the farmer. It involves in-volves capital and employed labor, which has a. similar influence. The greater play of intellect and' larger volume of returns, with less of personal per-sonal muscular work, and a business more executive in character, is more attractive to youthful ambition than one limited by the dull routine of one-man-power farming. The average quarter section of land, not the farms of those present having a wider outlook than absent farmers, but of the average Missouri farmer, whose crops arc reported at twenty-six twenty-six bushels of corn, twelve to thirteen bushels of wheat and twenty-five to twenty-six bushels of oats, will not give an income of $1,000, out of which comes a long list of running expenses, aside from the family bills. This leaves little, very little, for the bank. I will not attempt to say what rotation rota-tion you shall Ikwc nor how you shall use the crops other than that they should, aside from selling wheat, be fed on the farm, and the solid and liquid manure returned to the land. In a general way, nitrogen-gathering crops, such as clover, peas, soja bean or some other nitrogen gatherer should enter into it, not only to enrich en-rich the farm, but to balance the feed ration; that clover must precede wheat to supply the nitrogen so hard for wheat to get, and so costly for ryoj to buy as to be prohibitive; that obablylatsfjora -soil poor in phosphorus, may be added in lieu of the soluble phosphoric acid where the soils arc rich in organic matter or naturally acid. Pursue constructive farming rather than destructive farming. farm-ing. Build character in lieu of dwarfing dwarf-ing it by the ever-narrowing process of declining farming. Do not permiL yourselves to think in small yield's or results. The truth is, you have unconsciously un-consciously come to lean on a soil naturally rich, but not capable, as no .soil is capable of maintaining long, great returns without great art in its usc. No soil ever has or ever can maintain main-tain virile man unaided. You arc keeping it just up to or slightly ahead of your bare necessities, while you should keep the level of returns ahead of the requirements of a refined living, liv-ing, as exemplified in home life, social life and public life. But to return t'o the story and lesson of the farm. I was told, there and here, that labor could not be afforded. Then, if you cannot afford the lowest priced man laibor of the markets, the muscle worker, how can you afford to use your own labor? Only as labor Is used is wealth accumulated,' and no man ever became rich or ever will become be-come rich in industrial pursuits by his own unaided muscle. It was said there, and is said here, that capital cannot be afforded in farming, except in the minor key. Then arc we achieving living as laborers and arc rightly classed as such by many publicists. pub-licists. But capital is the foundation essential of a successful business and should ibe used to its maximum. Rotation of crops was the first essential. es-sential. Nature rotates crops, not a3 an accident, but in obedience to a fixed law. Observation in all ages has taught, tutored and educated man the value of rotation. On your state farm, in a four years' rotation trial, I found that wheat after wheat gave on unmanured area. 13.91 bushels; wheat after wheat manured with six tons annually gave 24.28 bushels; wheat in unmiamired rotation gave 30.10 bushels, while wheat in a manured ma-nured rotation gave 38.08 bushels. In these trials the value of rotation exceeded ex-ceeded the value of manuring. This gain grows out of the laws of plant growth and soil conditions or natural laws. What are some of these laws or renditions? I cannot discuss them, but enumerate a few. Plants have different leaf development, affecting feeding habits and vaporizing powers, i on the lacr score varying the mois- I turc of the soil by a very large and vital amount. They root at different j depths and feed on varying areas of the soil. They have each varying I root weights and composition, passing pass-ing from 2,000 pounds for grain crops to 8,000 pounds for clover, each having hav-ing varying powers of gaining from soil and air the elements of plant food. It is obvious that heavy rooted plants and nitrogen gatherers, like clover in the decay of roots and stubble, stub-ble, may feed plants like wheat that have low power to gain nitrogen, from the great store of this material in their roots. Three good crops of wheat can be got fromi the decay of clover roots. Thus, too, a plant with great power to get potash feeds one of low power. No two plants take the same ratio of plant food from the soil, potatoes gaining 35 pounds of 1 potash to 11 of phosphoric acid. Wheat requires more phosphoric acid than potash. Plants each have their I insect and fungus enemies both above i and below ground, and the continu- 1 ancc of a crop multiplies these en- j i mics in the soil used until, though un- noticed, they impair crop yields. I I need not multiply reasons nor detail I data as facts in abundance unite with 6 philosophy in proclaiming rotations I as of very great importance in a wise course of farming. I rm c much of regulated tillage. "Tillagv is manuring," is an epigrammatic epigram-matic statement that has come down the agricultural ages since the divine command to "Till and to keep it." I One of Job's moral virtues, as 2 claimed by him, was that of good plowing. Virgil, the world's greatest epic poet, said, "Vex the earth with continual hammerings." Tull, first philosopher of agriculture, taught the fl adequacy of tillage as a source of J plant fuod, and Roberts is still pro- claiming the power of tillage. Modern Mod-ern science explains its success. The dead air h-ld in the air spaces of gross land reduces to the minimum the cir- dilation of air in the scil. Hence it was that Sturtevant found but three-tenths three-tenths of a pound of nitrogen per acre under grass, while the open soil frequently tilled for the summer ishowed 210 pounds, resulting from the bacterial activity and oxidizing effects of a freer circulation of air in j the, opened soil. "The tooth of time" ! had opportunity to ap'ply itc teeth. I |