Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1892-03-12
THE GOOD WORK GOES Oh.
Secretary Rusk Proposes 20 Put $50, 900,
900 NJ ore Into the Pockets OF the Amer
lean Farmers.


900 More Into the Pockets OF the Amer
lean Farmers
Julian Hawthorne, the accomplished
scholar and popular noyelist, has written
an article IN Lippncott's Monthly, in
regard to the agricultural depar tment,
from which the following is taken:
The secretary Of agriculture is not salts
fed with wrInging from the officials of
foreign nations a reluctant consent to al
low our good things to reach their hungry
populations; he aims to appeal directly to
the populations themselves. Until very
lately, for example, Tho use of corn and
corn meal as human food was almost en-
tirely unknown in Europe the people
imagined ii was fed to animals only Mr..
Rusk dispatched agents to the other side
to educate these benighted people The
success of these agents has been great
Cora bread is likely to become as popular
on English breakfast tables as mullins and
crumpets are now; and in Berlin corn
hchens have been arranged for, and a
mixture of rye and corn is to substitute
the bread ration supplied to the German
army.
This is only the beginning of the god
work in the case of a single cereal, in its
relation to foreign consumers alone. The
prospects for the future are obvious; and
az Secretary Rusk observes, al increase in
crop exports of only 10 per cent would put
sixty million dollars year more in the
pockets OF our farmers. The value of our
crops for 1891 was seven hundred million
dollars greater than it was in 1890.
This Is a good showing, but, in numer-
GUS ways the department of agriculture is
working to make better and still better
showing here after, not only improving the
yield and the quality of the yield of land
now under cultivation, but making more
land cultivatable, and lowering prices by
bringing the farmer and the consumer into
closer relations, and thus eliminating the
huge profits of the middleman. For one
thing, experiments have been makde in
sugar manufacture, with view to retain
ing for ourselves the hundred million dol
lars that we annually Pay for the imported
article. Sugar cane, sorghum and beets,
are the three sources of commercial sugar
The department has shown that the
sotthern belt of our country can probably
produce the first, the middle belt the
second, and the regions farther north the
sugar beets. A process has been dis
CVftItu WutftDS sorghum, treated with
alcohol, yields double the amount of sugar
that it has been hitherto possible to
obtain from it, Our best resources are
incalculable; and altogether the pros.
perity OF home made sugar is assured.
Again, thorough study of forage
grasses has been made in order to discover
which varieties are best adapted to given
localities, and especially to obtain a grass
which will flourish in arid regions with
out irrigation. Such grass has been
found; it is as good as that in the moist
lands, though it is slower in its rate of
growth. In the course of a few years
millions of acres, now barren, will have
been given to agriculture by this discovery,
which but for tne department of agricul
ture might never rave been made, Scarce
y of less Importance is the Investigation
of the best means whereby awamp lands
may be reclaimed, and of the preserva,
ton and distribution OF forests, so as to
both prevent disastrous floods on the
one hand and to restrict arid areas on the
other.