my neighbors, only I cultivate.better than they do.. Judicious improvement pays, I have spent money in going to conventions and fairs, and seeing men and hearing them talk and getting ideas from them and carrying them home for practical use. And I have paid a good deal of money for papers for that very same purpose, and I know that money has not been thrown away. I have faith in my land and in my neighbors land if it is properly cultivated and improved. I have not overdrawn the picture. I think our farmers work too hard; I think they could make more money by giving more time to thinking and studying, and doing better what they do and making greater and better crops. These things can be done and should be.

Mr. ANDERSON. This is a subject that should interest all of the farmers in Wisconsin. I think in the improving of stock there is very much advantage to be gained. In regard to improving land, I will agree with my friend Smith, but I have raised good pork and sold it for three cents a pound live weight, but I could not afford to do that on good profitable land. We cannot afford to raise feed and fatten cattle here and compete with Texas. They can send good fat cattle from Texas up to Chicago for less than we can afford to sell them. And we cannot compete in raising wheat with the cheap lands of Minnesota and the northwest. So we must improve our lands and raise other crops.

Mr. Isaac Clark offered the following resolution, which was unanimously adopted:

Resolved, That the members of this convention tender to the president and secretary of the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, a vote of thanks for the very able, impartial and efficient manner in which they have conducted the deliberations of this convention, and also to other gentlemen, who by their papers and participations in the discussions have contributed so largely to the interest and profit of this gathering.

Secretary FIELD. I am proud of this convention and believe it has done something for the good of ourselves and our state. Our society two years ago called this convention under its auspices. It proved a success; but gentlemen, I can say that this is the best convention in my judgment we have ever held in the state. It has brought together practical men, men who are of recognized ability, men who are thinkers not only about their own business, but about business connected with other individuals and other interests. I

took particular pains in writing to the different clubs, granges &c., in the state to have them interest themselves, to send members who should represent their interests and have at heart the great interests of the state at large, and they have in many respects responded nobly. If I was ever proud of having anything to do with any enterprise in my life, this is it. Few enterprises collect together so large a class of intelligent, earnest, active, energetic, industrial workers, as have come up here to take part in this convention. I will tell you gentlemen, these conventions, these meetings where men come together with different opinions on these great industrial and social questions, are the means of harmony and unity, and can but result in great good to each of us, and ultimately for the good of society and the state.

There being no more papers to read, it was decided to have a general interchange of views on whatever subjects might be deemed most important, until the time of adjournment.

HOW SHALL FARMERS IMPROVE THEIR CONDITION?

Mr. BENTON. On this subject, I think the farmer should first improve himself, that he should first inform his mind, and get a knowledge of what can be done to improve his surroundings. The man who plants and cultivates according to the phases of the moon, as set forth in the almanacs, will never succeed in improving himself or his farm. The man who believes that wheat turns into chess, will probably never improve. There is a law of betterment under which we live, and if we take advantage of that law we may be benefited by it. Knowledge is power. Men must first have a desire for improvement before they will take any steps toward it, and therefore there must be methods of teaching men that there is something better for them to live for than to follow in the old ruts of by-gone days.

J. M. SMITH. One improvement that occurs to me is a compostheap. In my experience I am convinced that it would be well for farmers to emulate some shrewd men in that particular. I have often been surprised that farmers did not make more of the compost-heap. I have got one in my garden that is worth $1,000. That assertion may seem strange, and yet if one of you should offer me $1000 for it, on condition that I should cultivate next season without it, I should not take it. It is composed of about sixty cords

of barn-yard manure, such as I could get in the city and haul home; and then everything I could gather up in my garden, tomato and potato-tops, cabbage-stumps, &c., fifty wagon-loads. Then there was a bed of muck near me. From that I got fifty more wagonloads. Most of that heap has been worked over from one to three times during the season, and next year it will yield me a handsome return for the cost and trouble of making it. I shall mix some of it into the soil and use the finest of it for top-dressing. I think every farmer or gardener should have a compost-heap.

H. W. ROBY, of Milwaukee. Gentlemen, during the three days this convention has been in session I have listened attentively to the papers and discussions without saying anything; but, as there seems to be a lull in discussions and no more papers to read, I want to make a few suggestions on a topic not yet touched upon.

THE GARDEN AND LAWN.

I believe that an orderly, well-regulated, well-cultivated kitchen garden is one of the indispensable adjuncts to good living and well-being on the farm, as well as in the village, town and city. A complete garden with its seasonable fruits and vegetables has a far greater influence upon the health and comfort of a family than a majority of people are willing to concede.

The Creator intended us to have our "fruit in due season," and without that, as all the philosophy and medical science on the subject declare, we but invite and court disease, disorder and death. The person who indulges the same kind of diet the year through has a lease of no more than half a life. Far too many farmers' families are restricted to strictly farm products for food, the effect of which is too often plainly observable in the face and physique of many farmers' sons and daughters. Good or bad diet has a wonderful effect on the physical and mental constitution, as was so forcibly demonstrated in the army during the late war. Where the sixty odd chemical elements of the human system are not supplied as natural waste occurs, depletion, debility and enervation are the sure results.

The well-ordered kitchen garden will afford a wide way of escape from most of these evils. I was born and brought up on a farm and I still take delight in farm operations. I am yet farming, though on a small scale, in a great city, yet I derive many benefits

from it. In March I make hot-beds and grow early salad, radishes, cucumbers, etc.; also start many plants from seeds so as to transplant when the ground is warm enough, thus gaining a month or six weeks in time, and thus by succession, lengthening the season for many of the best garden luxuries. After the hot-bed has served its purpose in spring-time, it yields a fine lot of compost for fall use on the garden. In the bottom of it can be placed all the leaves, vines and vegetable refuse of the last season, which will become thoroughly decomposed and be out of the way.

I believe in deep tillage. My garden is thoroughly manured and spaded to a depth of three feet, and when I want beets, parsnips, carrots, etc., I have to go down into the earth for them, and I get no stinted, dwarf, fibrous, tasteless, make-believes, but something to make dyspeptics laugh and grow fat.

I believe, also, in small fruits, grapes, berries, &c. In any wellcultivated garden can be grown, with little cost, all the grapes, raspberries, gooseberries, currants, etc., that any family can use.

Last

fall I picked fifty pounds of grapes from two five-year-old vines, it being the second crop, and I expect twice as large a crop next fall. If people will plant and care for a few good grape-vines along their garden fences, where they are so often put to shame by rank weeds, the result will be very gratifying.

Another suggestion I wish to make is the improvement of farmer's door-yards and lawns. I think it safe to say that a majority of them are shabby, unsightly affairs, repugnant to all good taste. I don't wonder that farmers' sons who are brought up in some of the loathesome pens that I have seen should break away from home for the more cheerful and inviting homes of the city, with much the same alacrity that prisoners escaped from loathesome jails at the first possible opportunity.

We all, in some degree, have a taste for the beautiful and harmonious in life, and when that faculty is brought into harsh antagonism, and face to face with repulsive elements and conditions, it is no wonder that we rebel against so uncomfortable an alliance.

I well remember the absolute enchantment that possessed me when for the first time I walked abroad in a great city and beheld what to me seemed so many thousands of paradises on earth; so many fine lawns and gardens and partarres of flowers and shubbery. From that day I ceased to be contented with the disgraceful and

unhallowed surroundings of a majority of rural homes. You may say that money makes the difference. Well, I am prepared from experimental knowledge to contradict the major part of the proposition. I know that taste and energy does more than money to make home-surroundings charming. The spirit of shabby, lazy indifference is rampant in the country, and one reason for it seems to be, the lack of proximity of homes. Jaxtaposition of homes begets a spirit of emulation and each family strives to have at least as nice surroundings as the family alongside of them, and thus more care and attention is bestowed on the place.

The spread of farmers' homes over the country seems to be about midway between nomadic life and the higher life of great culture and refinement; about half way between the barbarity of the Indian and æsthetic life of the higher grades of intelligence. Added to all this, shiftlessness, thriftlessness and abject laziness are largely chargeable with the untidy surroundings of the farmer's domicil. I have been there and know it. I think the farmer who keeps pigs, poultry, &c., around his door, who has no lawn or garden, or cheerful playground for his children to be interested in and enjoy, has no business to complain if his sons should happen to develop a grade of taste that rises above that shameful condition of life and gravitate to the city where greater congeniality allures and invites them.

But aside from these considerations, when farmers' sons develop into unusual brain-power and force as they so often do in spite of poor encouragement, you might as well try to eclipse the sun with a fig leaf or restrain the eagles flight with a spider's thread as to try to bind them to the dull clods of the valley with the leash of present agricultural charms and allurements.

Secretary FIELD. The time for final adjournment has now arrived, and I hope you will all go home full of enthusiasm in relation to what has transpired here. I hope and believe you will go to the clubs and the different societies you represent, and tell them what a good time we have had, and thus stimulate them to come here another year or send you here again, and in that way we shall be able to assist a great deal in the good work of advancing the industrial interests of the state.

The papers read, have been of more than ordinary interest, and the discussions spirited, entertaining and instructive, making the convention more profitable than ever held in the state.