T

HE wrinkled old farmer looked anxiously around at the sky line marked by green corn stalks in sharp contrast against the blue of the sky.

Nowhere was a suggestion of a cloud to be seen. The ground beneath his feet was dry and cracked from the long drought.

"The corn'll not hold out much longer," he said to his wife. "A few days of these hot winds and it'll be burned up. A good rain now would save it."

Already the long leaves on the corn stalks were beginning to curl up around the edges and the color changed from a glossy green to a duller hue. The leaves had begun to rattle against

each other like dead things when the wind blew-a wind menacing with blasts of hot air and without a promise of moisture. That day and many days that followed passed without rain and when finally the welcome downpour

actually did come the corn was past its help.

The farm, which should have produced three hundred bushels of corn fell short of that amount just fifty per cent.

As a result Farmer Perkins did not have enough feed to keep his stock through the winter and sold off some of his brood mares and a couple of calves. The market. was not good when these forced sales were made and he sold, at a loss, to a neighbor who had plenty of feed and a talent for trading. The poor crop was an especial disappointment because the Perkins barn had been running down for years and had to be rebuilt. By mortgaging the place he managed to pull through the winter, but the year's hard work resulted in no profit and Mr. Perkins is discontented and discouraged. He is talking of selling out and moving to the Southwest or the Northwest or some other place, where, he has heard, the odds against which

the drought which may come next season."

In these remarks Henry has summed up the principal reason why we have so many barbers and teamsters and so few farmers. If all the seasons were good, there would be no "back to the farm" movement. Most of us would be there now, proprietors of automobiles and stockholders in the local bank. It is the bad season that cuts down the crop totals and puts dollars to drawing interest on farm mortgages.

Therefore-reform the bad seasons and all will be as happy as a melodrama with the villain safely impaled on the hero's penknife. Then will the golden harvest be golden indeed, and from the American farms will come the foodstuffs to feed the world. This is a practical

Mr.

Let us return for a moment to Mr. Perkins and his poor corn crop. Perkins' knowledge of farming was gained from his father, to whom this knowledge was imparted by Grandfather Perkins and thence we might trace the knowledge back through preceding generations until we find the original Perkins on the fields of Angleland showing his firstborn how to guide the wooden plowshare. We would find little difference between the methods of cultivation then and now. The present Perkins, worrying over his poor prospects and hoping for rain, plows and plants and harvests in much the same way that the first plowing and planting and harvesting was done. His methods he defends because of their antiquity and his own vast ignorance of the mysterious forces

of nature which transform a grain of corn into a towering stalk.

So far as his understanding of the thing goes, it might be the old army game in which the operator urges: "If you never risk you never will accumulate." Mr. Perkins risks and then trusts to the whims of the season to allow him to accumulate a crop. He is playing the game like his father played it and beneath the three shells of Seed, Soil and Season, hopes to discover the golden harvest.

Into this old fatalistic idea of farming come the experimenting optimists of the United States Department of Agricul

five bushels to the yield, and a scientific method of cultivation will bring the product up to forty bushels, thereby accomplishing the important economic feat of placing two corn pones in the oven where only one baked before.

They have made farming a business in which the profits can be forecast with as much accuracy as in any other business. It is their belief that the season, as an unavoidable factor in farming, is a myth, just like the aged idea that potatoes, having eyes, should be planted. in the dark of the moon so that no light would lure them above the ground to waste their strength on a luxuriant

growth of valueless vines. They have proved that the inherited depravity of seed and soil and season can be overcome and that the bad season is a condition of farming exactly to the

ture with the idea that seasons are relatively unimportant. Nature is bountiful, but the age when she acted as a fairy godmother to infant humanity disappeared with the lost tribes

of Israel and now the treasures must be looked for with the test tube and the experiment field. It is not enough to plow and plant. There are ways of plowing and ways of planting and the big returns follow the best methods.

Pursuing this idea, the investigators have discovered a few of the simple and practical methods and have demonstrated that a corn field which produces twenty bushels to the acre under ordinary methods will produce twenty-five bushels with careful selection of seed. By improved methods of preparing the soil, the yield can be increased to thirty bushels. The correct use of fertilizer or a good crop rotation system will add another

FIELD OF DURANGO COTTON. A fine growth under proper cultivation.

same extent as it is a condition of the weather.

To this work several hundred missionaries of the Department of Agriculture are devoting themselves. For years the government has aided in the maintenance of experiment stations in every state, but the new missionary campaign carries the instruction into the homes of the farmers themselves. The tests and demonstrations are carried on, not on government land, but on the land of the farmer and the work is done by him, under the direction of the government agent.

The missionary campaign centers in the south central states, where it is most

needed, and in a hundred communities a miracle of transformation has been worked, not only in the production of better crops, but in the optimism that follows. The movement in each community usually starts with a school house meeting championed by the commercial club or the progressive business men from the county seat. The importance of better farming methods -is discussed and the plan for the establishment of experiment tracts to be cultivated under the supervision of government experts is told of. The farmers are urged to devote from one to five acres for this purpose. They are asked to take nothing for granted, to believe nothing that

the attendant result that have rewarded them.

At a recent meeting of this kind in Alabama a lanky cotton planter arose to say: "I was born in a cotton field at 1 have worked cotton on my farm fo more than forty years. I thought no one could tell me anything about rasing cotton. I had usually raised one-half a bale on my thin soil and I thought that was all the cotton there was in it in one season. The demonstration agent came along and wanted me to try his plan on two acres. Not to be contrary I agreed, but I did not believe what he told me. However I tried my best to do as he said, and at the end of the year I had a bale

they do not see, and to follow only the methods which

through their own work on the experimental tract prove suc

cessful. Throughout the season these experimental tracts are visited by the department agent who gives expert instruction as to the cultivation of the crops.

Sometimes the farmers of a community meet him at one of the demonstration farms or at a general meeting held at the school house. Here the farm missionaries borrow an idea from the revival meetings of the country districts, and the exhorting talk of the lecturer is followed by an experience meeting, in which those who have been converted from the dark belief of haphazard farming to the true light of scientific agriculture tell of their change of faith and

and a half to the acre

on the two acres I had worked his way and a little over a third of a bale on the

land I had worked my

way. You could have knocked me down with a feather. This year I have a bale and a half to the acre on my whole farm. As a cotton planter I am just one year old."

Every meeting of this kind brings out experiences and some of the scoffing non-believers are converted.

The field instruction given the farmers is based on the ten commandments of the Department of Agriculture, which are as follows:

I. Prepare a deep and thoroughly pulverized seed bed, well drained. Break in the fall to a depth of eight, ten, or twelve inches, according to the soil, with implements that will not bring too much.