The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-01-06
SAVE THE CAME;
 BUILD UP THE FARM
Conservation Would do Wonders
 For Connecticut

spoke recently at d dinner gwen Ioh the members of the state board of az -iculture, being the chief speaker of the evening. The theme of his ad- dress was plea for the people or me state to save the game and to build up the farm. He spoke as follows:
 Benjamin Franklin once said: There seems to be three ways for nation to acquire wealth: The nrst is by war as the Romans did In plum dering their conquered neighbors;thls is robbery: the second by commerce, which is generally cheating; the third by agriculture, the only honest way wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground in 2 kind of continual miracle wrought by the hand of God in his favor as a reward for his innocent life ana his vfrtuous industry.
 This is putting 1t little strong per haps for these days of blight and bugs and some other things, but MT. Franklin vvaS not a farmer, and the great and wise men who acqnlre wealth and fame "above the soll gen eraliy put agriculture at the head or tine list of high and happy occupa- tions The wise farmer. however, who cannot get away from the farm himself, can hardly be blamed under present conditions. if he tries to start his boys in some line of business less dependent upon the continual mir acie- shall say "of escape" from eood end drought and frost and in- sect. It was Charles Dudley Warner who said Blessed be agriculture, if one doesn't have too much of 1t, ana MT. Warner had a garden of his own and knsv what he was talking about.
 We read to-day, as always, of the Thr.e Billions of bushels of corn in Uncle sam's crib this year. and so on through the list of astounding totals from hay lot. grain field, pas surs and chicken coop. But if we di- vide these totals. great as they are by the number of persons engaged in eietr production, We shall find that fhe farmsr gets much less per hour for his ia6or than the mechanic In I7s0 ninety per oent- of our popula- ton were fArmerA in 1900 only 33 per cent were enSagsd in agriculture. In our town state of Connecticut there were l7oo iess farmers in 1900 than In 1850 Of the twenty millions of acres Of farm land in New England, only eight millions were cultivated n. 1900 whereas thirteen millions were titled in 1880. and Tn these two decades snore than 2.5oo new factories were built in New England.
 For c lime labor saving machinery and the virgin soil of the West made good this exodus of men from the farm to the factory. but it was only for . snort time. There were fifty seven millions of neat cattle fin the United States in 1890, and but fifty two millions in 1900. If the increase in cattle had kept pace with the in- crease in population. there should have been seventy millions of cattle in 1900. In 1850 there was a whole hog and fraction for every person in the country: to-day there is less than half a porker to the person. Tn 1850 there was a sheep apiece for all; in 1900 only half sheep to the man.
 This all means that when agrfcul- ture Is less profitable that other in- ldustries, its ranks will be depleted until a revival of the demand for and consequent increase in the price of ag- ricuitural products make 1t possible for the farmer to take out of the farm more than he puts in. To be sure. we have in Connecticut to-day our peach kings and apple kings and to- bacco princes, and I ann glad to be- neve all that I read about their we'll earned successes. We also have our parlor farmers who live in town in the winter and who put into their country toys s5 for every 50 cents they take out. We have, too. our literary farmers who prepare articles for the magazines that make the mouths of the unwary water for the joys and sweets of the soil.
 But when we come to the farmer whose capital consists of worn out acres ever decaying buildings and per hapS Q mortgage, we must expect a lack of interest while we talk to him of fancy fruits and blooded stock. He knows that a peach tree set in the best land he has will, soon die unless he feeds and washes and watches it as he would his first born son, and, if he has the credit to borrow money for the venture, what assurance has he that his patience and courage will not he rewarded by an untimely frost? He knows, too. that an apple tree set in the same soil that bore sound fruit for his grandfather will never bear him anything dt to eat unless he wraps its twigs and roots in dollar bills. And as for blooded stock, he might as we'll think of diamonds un- Iess he buys . cheap thoroughbred in which case he generally gets little but ped.gre and disease for his money. In short the majority farmer who wrings the comforts of life for himself and family from the dear old farm must be Napoleon of finance, an insurgent statesman of the very latest style and q moralist of heroic courage and in- finite self denial. or he must have potash and nitrogen for less money than they now cost
 We like to look back upon those old days when walnut trees bore WalnutS end cherry trees bore cherries and hens laid eggs and turkeys did not have the pip and-the office sought the man We like to look back at them and perhaps the chemist will bring them back when the agricultu- ral statesman has failed. The gard eners of France are to-day getting a thousand bushels of potatoes to the acre and the farmers are growing ten tons of hay to the acre. This is noth- ing. One ear of corn grown this. year by MT. Handel of Glastonbury, Conn. brought it's owner $97 and ten other ears raised by this same gentle man brought him $200. Messrs. Will son and White insist that 1t won't be long before the farmer will come to his own again. Let us hope for the best, for good times and good strong men and women are most likely to be found where the tillers of the soii have money in the bank.
 There are two things that the far :ners of Connecticut through their in- 6uence in the General Assembly can do at once. They can save their game birds from the hunters and their sheep from dogs. More than a mill lion dollars worth of game birds are exported from England annually to gay nothing of home consumption. Game covers in England return to their owners annual rentals as high as S3o an acre and even more. Con necticut imported 1000 of the. Hungar- san cartridges last year, and this year some 20 900 guns were let, loose for their destruction. They are fine birds,