Dakota farmers' leader. (Canton, S.D.) 1890-19??, 1907-12-27
HOW TO RAISE MORE CORN.
PROF. HOLDEN OF IOWA AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE
BEFORE ILLINOIS FARMERS INSTITUTE

We have to put little more brains
into our work; we must get our heads
into the game of raising corn. 1t takes
good land, good seed, good care and a
good man back of it to make good
crop of corn. ~
When I see boy or a man Tor a
1 am ashamed of him; especially if he
is ashamed of this great business Iof
agriculture.
Prof. Holden told of a Michigan girl
who said to him: 81 would like to
trade that six years of Latin and
Greek for little practical knowledge
and sense, SO l could take care of my
little boy. He is sick and 1 don't
know what to do for him." That is
the difference between schooling and
education.
| / FARMERS GOING TO STUDY CORN.
The farmers are going to spend fif-
teen minutes day studying seed in
this great state of Illinois; that lies at
the foundation of things. The pro-
blem in the next fifty years is how to
make an ear of corn grow where lit
tie nubbin grows today.
This little ear of corn taking up
one from the table, weighs ten ounces.
One such to each hill makes thirty
three bushels to the acre. This other
ear weighs II ounces and makes thir-
ty-eight bushels to the acre. If our
land is strong enough, and we work
we'll enough to produce two of these
ears, the yield would be seventy-six
bushels to the acre. Two ears of l
pound each to the hill will yield 100
bushels per acre.
| POOR SEED CAUSES POOR STAND.
| have gone into and carefully stud
led over 5000 corn fields, and have
tested over 5000 samples of seed corn
sent me from all over Iowa. The
cause of the poor stand of corn is poor
seed. In one field at Coon Rapids,
Ia, where the farmer said he had no
need to hear me talk corn, l found II
hills missing out Of 100 hills; 80 hills
that had only one stalk, and 20 per
cent of the stalks were barren. He
had planted corn of SO per cent vital
| ity.
At one place where found very
poor corn the little boy said to me:
"It looks to me that there must be a
whole lot of stalks in our field fooling
around and doing nothing," and he
was just about right.
A man who has very poor corn said
to me that he had not had any trou-
BILE with the seed. This was simply
because he had not taken any trouble;
the seed needed attention that he had
not given it.
GREAT WASTE OF LABOR.
1t seems to me one of the most pre-
cious things today is the labor of a
human being. The man who grew
poor corn wasted labor and wasted
land, and yet he got up early and work
ed late and hard. He had two boys out
Of school all summer, because he was
trying to pay off mortgage by rails
ing SO per cent corn.
TESTING EVERY EAR OF SEED CORN.
In 10000 homes in Iowa the wives,
boys and girls have tested the seed
corn.
Years ago the speaker taught a
country school in which the pupils
tested the seed for every farmer in
the district.
If I were allowed to give but one
order to the farmers of the state, it
would be to test six kernels from
every ear of seed corn this next spring
before they are planted; throw out
the bad ears and throw out the weak
ears.
CAN'T TELL WITHOUT TESTING.
! A good many people think they can
tell when corn will grow and when it
will not, without testing it.. Hundreds
of young men from all over Iowa come
to the college at Ames for the two
weeks short course. One year I let
each member of a large class take
forty acres to examine and study for
two days, and see if he could tell
which would grow and which would
not. They did not know that 1 had
set little trap for them by mixing
up good ears and bad ears and ears of
weak vitality, all Of which had test
ed in germinator ten days previous
ly. When their judgement of each
ear was compared with my record of
its test it was seen they had made
mistakes. When we were through, l
asked If there was any one Of them
who thought he could pick out corn
that was safe to plant without test
ing it, and not single hand went up
over the audience. You may often
tell by examination when kernel is
dead, but you can not tell when it is
weak or low in vitality without the
terminating test.
GETTING THE BOY INTERESTED
! Every Monday after breakfast father
and mother sat down for half an houl
and planned the work for the week
with my brothers and myself We
stood up little straighter and taller
and I felt that we were an important