ment. Just now certain industries are striding forward with increasing demands at advancing prices, while agricultural workers receive but little, if any, increase in price for their productions. These unbalanced conditions between industries cannot continue for any long period.

HOW IMPROVE THEIR BUSINESS.

A lull in the conflict gives opportunity to reorganize the forces in order to meet new demands. What can farmers do, as a class, for their own improvement? Some suggestions have been already made. The greatest good can be secured only by organization and co-operation. There is no such proportion of the population engaged in a single calling as there is in this. By organization, local and general, the farmers should put in the State and National Legislatures men who would represent their interests. And in doing this they would advance the interests of the people.

By organization and co-operation farmers could regulate local taxation, improve their schools, keep and extend free rural mail-delivery, buy lower and sell higher, improve their business methods, and by discussion among themselves, improve their ability to take part in public affairs-a great need. They should lay hold of the market end of their business, study its demands and cater to them in order to larger profits. To do this it would not be necessary to enhance the price to the consumer so much, but to get the product to him without passing through so many hands, and in a better condition. Consumers' interests call for their co-operation in this matter. He should learn how to advertise, and do more of it. Please the eye and the appetite, and the pocketbook will disgorge. The farm itself and the dairy should be so well cared for that the farmer will not be ashamed to put his name and the name of his place on a bulletin board at the entrance to his home.

Do you ask what organization is best? The Farmers' Institute is the farmers' winter-school of methods. It affords a needed opportunity for improving the business of agriculture. The local club is helpful also. But for the greatest good we should belong to such organizations as are both State and National in their character. There are State and National Dairy Unions for dairymen, State Boards of Agriculture, Stock Breeders' Associations, and the National Grange, Patrons of Husbandry. A progressive farmer will also keep

in touch with progressive ideas by paying for and reading some one or more of the leading agricultural papers.

Agricultural Progress and Profit. The latter depends upon the former. No progress, no profit. True, exceptionally favorable natural conditions may give a non progressive man exceptional profits, but such instances do not contravene the statements made. Many occupants of farms are groping in darkness at noon-day. There is light, but they work on in darkness, and the end of each weary year finds them no better off than when they began it. They have made no progress.

UNNECESSARY LOSSES.

Profit is gain beyond expenditure-excess of value over cost. In a fairy study of this question of profits, the expenditures on the farm and for the family now and in former times must be considered. That a wide difference is found between the forepart and the latter-half of the present century must be admitted. What the farmers of the earlier period allowed were, largely, but the plain necessities of common lives. Farmers now, in large numbers, procure and enjoy the luxuries and accessories of modern life equal to any in other callings of equal means.

I would have them live well. There is nothing better for a man, in any calling, than to eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor. It is his portion that God giveth him. But if he could put some money aside each year by denying some of the luxuries that are not necessities, and doesn't do so, or if he spends it foolishly in other directions, he should not complain of hard times.

Again, profit is intimately connected with economical practice. I do not speak of economy in the matter of self denial, but as it relates to wastefulness. I speak of farm manures. I believe that for every acre of agricultural land in the United States, there is an annual loss of at least fifty cents in plant-food from the barn-yard accumulations. At this low estimate, there being 4,564,641 farms in the United States, of average size of 137 acres, we have an annual loss for the whole country of $311,667,908.50. But this waste varies in different localities. In the newer productive regions of the West it is total, nothing is saved.

True to the American, if not the universal human, idea of exhausting all natural resources first, whether of forest or fertility, they crop and burn. The Middle West farmers are awakening to this miserable policy now; they find it necessary to husband home resources of plantfood by rotation of crops and utilization of manure in order to produce paying crops.

The story of agriculture in the Atlantic States is one of exhaustion. We are beginning to restore soil-production by the use, largely, of commercial manures. This is well. But why not, at the same time, take care of the home product? This done and wisely applied, the bill for the other could be largely reduced; or, if it were continued, the product from both would be much greater than it now is.

Another, a source of great loss in the dairy business, is the support and care of bovine boarders-dead-heads-pure and simple. And yet that farmer, while complaining, will not inaugurate a system of weighing and measuring whereby he can determine positively whether each cow is being kept at a profit or not.

We have glanced hastily at the marvelous progress made in agricultural machinery, in agricultural science, in the practice of agriculture, in stock improvement and in the better understanding of the business by farmers. We have not found that the price per bushel, pound, &c., has increased in the same proportion. But in another way the total returns are well up with the progress indicated. For the yields per acre for farm crops and per head for stock have been largely increased and at less cost by means of improved machinery and by hetter knowledge.

The old acre has more than doubled its yield under the new management, while the modern cow produces as much as two or three of her ancestors. We are doing better than formerly. There is progress and with it increasing profit under intelligent management, and no business will prosper without that.

There is one other phase of the question of profit to which I feel I ought to refer in concluding this paper. The accumulation of money is not all of life. There is the profit of intellectual growth. What intelligent man, interested in the great business of agriculture, can pursue this varied and wonderful calling—the foundation and support of every other and not become a broader-minded man, with an enlarged conception of the works and laws of the Creator placed in his hands.

Profi! of Citizenship.-Is it nothing to be a member of a commonwealth and country in which he, with others of his class, can have the say as to who shall make and administer the laws and what those laws shall be? With the farmers largely rests the question of the perpetuity of our democratic form of government and what changes, from time to time, shall be made in it.

The Profits of the Social Relations.-The sociability generally practiced among farmers is not found elsewhere. It does not exist in cities. I know whereof I speak. The summer work is interspersed with social gatherings, the winter with the old-time visiting parties. Every one knows his neighbor. These occasions are marked by hearty good feeling and social equality that is cheering when contrasted with society lines that are drawn elsewhere.

Profil of Home and Family.-The family is the crop of greatest value, but often it receives the least consideration. A young lady once told her father he thought more of his hogs than he did of his daughter. In view of facts already quoted, shall we not give more emphasis to the duty and the privilege of rearing children on the farm, away from the entangling temptations of city life-noble men and women, who shall be able to stand morally, and as citizens, for the right, always?

The home on the farm-the farmer's home. Let it be the center of the family ties, the place of greatest attraction. Let the influences there exerted be loving, wholesome, pure, so that the memory shall always revert to it, and to those who dwelt together there, as the most delightful place, the most charming circle in all the world.

The future of agriculture rests largely with the farmers. Is it not a business of such importance, variety and attractiveness as to com mand our admiration, our industry and our best thought?

NOTE-The prices for farm products in Table II should be compared with the prices received for similar crops in the earlier periods given in Table I.

For short periods, during abnormal conditions, high prices were received by farmers, but there was also corresponding increase in what they had to pay. Table II shows prices received in 1864-1866 and 1899, also price of groceries, dry goods, &c.

The price paid for the necessaries of life during this period was as