The Miller press. [volume] (Miller, S.D.) 190?-current, 1908-01-09
CORN, CONFIDENCE
AND THE WEST
Continued from first page)

\ 40 otOAShS ~ viz PCAiN VI P1OficoDi
production, it goes on producing
, full time and full capacity-and sell
ing what it produces. Nor does on
hear it said of this, as of some otheI
industries, that it contrives to jug
gle its markets by selling its whea
or corn abroad at lower prices thar
than those ruling at home, on tn,
, plea that it must get rid of a menac
ing surplus. Maybe that practice il
didn't openly profess that view o.
things, he carried it around in his IN.
terror, nevertheless. That is to say
he didn't know the conditions under
which he was working; and SO, Of
course, he couldn't adapt himself tc
them. Therefore, plainly. the out.
come was not in his hands
Corn-Breeding, the New Science
But the farmer of today. working
on those same lands, knows just
what he is doing, and why, and how,
with no thanks for his harvest to
anybody but himself. That's the
the difference. The change has
been radical, revolutionary. Fol-
lowing this change, as it has wrought
itself out, may get an under
standing of the reason why these
lands, which twenty years ago were
held at a high level of values, fell
fifty per cent in market price within
the next five years, and then swung
upward again. slowly, steadily, sure
ly, to the old point; and one may see
why this valuation, unsound in the
earlier instance. is sound as a nut in
the later.
Nor need one run the whole gamut
D, the farming industry. The story
of one of the great staple crops, as
Its culture has progressed since the
eighties, will serve the purposs well
enough. This crop is Indian corn.
When the boom" was at its
height. two decades gone, corn cul-
ture was about as much of a science
as the practide of medicine was be-
fore the dawn of knowledge of the
disease germ, or as gold mining was
in the Sacramento Valley in forty
nine. To turn the furrow, to drop
the seed, and then to run a cultiva-
tor over the field, now and again,
until the growing crop was "laid by"
in that was corn farm
ing. Year after year the field was
planted to corn, corn, corn; andyear
after year the farmer planted seed
taken from the last crop. whose ped
igree ran back in a straight line to
the time when the sod of this farm
was first turned
In 1880 the average yield of corn
per acre in this prairie country was
but twenty eight bushels. In 1890
1t was twenty nine bushels. Besides
eighteen or twenty cents a bushel
was a lucky price-something to talk
about; while the year that saw corn
at a quarter of a dollar was
a year to be celebrated. Often it
sold at half that price on the farms,
and in the black years it was down
to ten cents. Even at top notch
the gross returns per acre of
corn amounted to no more than
about eve dollars and a half-net j
returns, over all cost of production, {
just about nothing at all. I
When the boom was followed /
by inevitable reaction and collapse, /,
we had the quaint and curious spec
tacle of the farmer, sick at heart |
plumb disguised, spending +,
weary years in a futile attempt to
|egislate his grievances out of exist {
ence. If that boom hadn't SWELL |
ed and burst, the Farmers Alliance
wouldn't have taken to cutting pol
Itical capers in the prairie country
along about the year of grace 1890. /.
The Farmers Alliance didn't eff
feet anything in crop betterment.
It's members had the wrong
'hunch." The salvation of the ,
West really began barely a half-doz-
en- years ago, when a few theorists
came along and started an agitation
for new, improved. scientific meth
DDS OF crop culture among other
corn breeding. True, the
theory wasn't brand new then. It
had been carried around in the minds
the dreamers for quite a while;
but in Kansas, for instance-a state .
incommonly alert and open armed
tor every promising new notion-iti ,
got no welcome or standing until so
ate as 1903, when the State Agricul-
'ural College at Manhattan took it ,
Up. The work done at, Manhattan
will serve very well as an illustration