The record-union., 1899-05-21
more vigorous policy in agricultural


science.
"Theres new era in store for the
farmers of the United States, and those
of New York and the Mississippi Valley
in particular. 1t will be the new fash
toned farmer who will bring it about
He is the Moses of modern agriculture.
1.-THE farmer of the future said Mr..
Wilson, must be practical scientist.
The man who does not understand the
science of the soil has no business on
the farm. If boy wants to be farm
er, it is as necessary that he take
course at an agricultural college as it is
to a boy who wants to be a lawyer, a
doctor, a preacher to have a universal
education.
1.-The great need of the agricultural
college has been instructors who could
instruct. Why. out in Iowa, we could
send to Chicago and get a carload Of
chemists, If we wanted to pay the
money for them, but We could not find a
man who could teach the science of
making butter and cheese. The Govern
ment can endow agricultural colleges
| the more that is done the better-but it
cannot furnish instructors, because
there have not been any, We are going
to give a few young men a chance at
the department to learn the scientific
features of instruction in agriculture,
but we can only help a few.
1.-THE only way these instructions can
be made is through the agricultural col
leges. We don't want students taught
the theory but we want the practical
facts put before their eyes.
There is no lesson as good as an OBJ
ject lesson The boy who sees expert
ments in dairying carried on from day
to day knows when he sees the results
how it all came about-and it is not be-
cause some one else told him that it was
thus and SO. He knows the science of
dairying and has been taught it in the
most practical way. The dairy farmer
of the United States is going to be a
great factor in the future He is fac
| tor at present, to be sure, but nothing
to what he will be, and I tell you why
because we have learned the secret of
Denmark's butter and cheese keeping
50 well in tropical climates.
1.-The farmers of New York State and
those of the Mississippi Valley make as
| good butter as is produced anywhere.
Denmark makes good butter. We send
our butter to China and cannot compete
with the butter Of Denmark. Why?
Because it won't keep. There is a splen-
did market in the Orient, but we are
shut out of it practically, because our
butter will not stand expectation to that
sort of climate. Mind you, in all other
places we never had any trouble, but
the minute we struck the tropics with
butter and cheese it was very different
1T is in everything that the farmer
has to cultivate and grow that the rea-
son for his being an agricultural scien-
fist is found. If he knows the reason
why things don't grow or do grow, or
his crops are large or small, he gains
wisdom that will help him to increase
his crops the next year, and so make his
income greater.
THE scientific farmer has a better
chance of making a big income than
any farmer ever had. But the man who
insists on following the old-fashioned
methods of never learning anything
that his father did not know, is going
to have trouble to make both ends
meet.
There is no place that the farmer
needs to apply scientific methods more
than out West, where they irrigate
their lands. 1 am going to have that
matter thoroughly looked into. Hun
dreds of acres of fine land are being
ruined because the men who irrigate
them do not understand the scientific
facts about it. They let too much water
run on the land; this brings the alkali
TO the surface, and the result is that
there is no use trying to grow anything
Now, what should be done is to study
the science of the soil so as to know
how to supply the water, and in what
quantity. If scientific reasoning had
been employed in the beginning, this
land would not have been comparatively
worthless to-day.
The new fashioned farmer, the scien-
tine farmer, must study the feeding of
cattle. Not pound of cotton seed was
fed to the 100000 cattle we exported
last year, although the South raised
100000 tons of it. That cotton seed
was mostly wasted or made fertilizer of.
mink what it might have amounted
to If it had been fed to beef cattle. The
trouble with the farmer is that he
doesn't know how to make the best of
what he has, and he has got to learn
the science of agriculture to know how"
l-St. Louis Globe Democrat