of clover. I would say, plow your land and put it into condition. as quickly as possible. Seed it down to clover as quickly as you can. If I couldn't get wheat and oats and seed it with that, seed it with clover alone. I wouldn't plow down the first crop of clover. I would make hay out of it. The second crop I would make seed out of. Then I would plow as soon as the seed was taken off, and either put into clover immediately again or put in corn if it is fit to raise corn. When he sows clover seed sow plaster also. Land must be very poor that will not raise clover if it is well plastered. If it is clay land it is better with plaster. On my land, which I call rich corn prairie land, plaster shows well with clover. When I came to my farm it was said to be run down. I have lived in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, where land has been farmed from before the revolutionary war, and it was not run down. I sent eighteen bushels of clover seed to Wisconsin before I moved here, to be sowed on that one farm, some twenty-five years ago. The man who was on the farm wanted to know what I wanted to do. Said I, "Seed it down and pasture it off. Let it stand there until I get it plowed up." He thought I was crazy. Everybody sowed wheat those times. I found that that land produced the first year that I plowed it up, a very fine crop of corn; and the next year an average of twenty-eight bushels of wheat to the acre. That was the run down land.

I say clover and pasture, and the oftener you get into clover the better, until you get the land up to producing some crop, whatever you wish corn, oats or barley. I would not like to recommend spring wheat any more in this country, because the richer the land the worse the chinch bugs are.

Judge Bryant said the other night, "Insure the building heavily, set fire to them and run off." I would not do that. I would cultivate the land. I sow plaster at the time I sow the seed, and again after I get the first crop.

A voice- What was the soil?

Mr. Anderson - My soil was dark colored prairie soil.

J. M. Smith-May I ask you a question. Suppose the young man has not the means to live. Now your plan is all rightthere is no doubt of that; but we presume that the young man,

whoever he may be, is poor; he hadn't the means to live; he cannot break it up in that way at once. He may do it by piece.

meal along.

Mr. Anderson The young man has not told us he has no means of living. He only asked how he shall improve that piece of land. If you ask how he shall make a living if he hasn't any money, I say work for somebody else or borrow some money. If he is an honest, upright man he will have some credit. A man's credit is frequently worth as much as his capital. I endorse everything Mr. Smith says about borrowing money and running in debt.

A voice- May I enquire how much plaster you sow to the acre?

Mr. Anderson-I would think a hundred pounds to the acre is sufficient. Some say more. If the land is rich enough I would not sow plaster at all.

Hon. Sat. Clark- I have had some little observation in relations to this matter, and I suppose it would not be improper for me to tell what interest I had in the matter to start with, before I tell about the improvement of the soil.

I always had a great deal of trouble with my servant girls. After they lived with me about six months they would get married. I once met a girl on the street that I thought no man would touch with a pair of tongs. I collared her and took her home. She stayed with us a little over two years, and she came in one Sunday and said she was going to get married. (Laughter.) I said, "To whom?" "I don't know his name," she said, "I just saw him a little while ago. He is in the kitchen; he asked me to marry him. He says he has got eighty acres of land about six miles from here. He has got a yoke of oxen, a cabin, and eleven acres broken up and under cultivation." Ricke married him and I took a good deal of interest in them. I went over to the Kas kaskia one day and saw them taking out fish (bullheads) for manure. I don't want my veracity impeached. This man told me he hauled away eight hundred and thirty wagon loads of bullheads, let them freeze, and piled them up and covered them with straw. In the spring, as soon as he could plow, he took a subsoil

plow and borrowed some extra teams and plowed the furrows very deep and filled them with bullheads. There was a space in the center where he had no bullheads. He planted it to corn six feet apart and in hills. And he called me to look at that corn when it was growing. Every where that there were bullheads it stood eleven feet high, and where there wasn't any it stood about four to four and a half, and it was as nice a piece of corn as ever was grown in the American bottoms in Illinois. He got over a hundred bushels of shelled corn per acre. But that was not the best part of it. While the corn was growing, in the month of August he sowed it to winter wheat, right in among the corn. He never harvested his corn until it came winter and the ground was frozen, and he then went in with a sled and scooped off the ears, leaving the stalks standing; cut them down in the spring and left them on the ground, and he got fifty-two bushels of winter wheat to the acre off that land. Now I tell you bullheads make good manure. Unfortunately for us there is a dam below us now in the river, and we can't get any more bullheads.

Mr. Phillips-I indorse everything that Mr. Anderson said. I believe that is the correct plan. If the young man has means that he can go on and do that, I think he is all right if he will follow up that plan, if his land is run down. If he has not means to do that, he had better let it go for what it will fetch, and strike out west and get him a homestead; because there are openings for young men there.

As far as Mr. Clark's story is concerned, where we stop in this city we have a little society among ourselves, some eight or ten of us stopping at one place, and in order to accommodate some of our members we passed this resolution there among ourselves, and it might be extended to this whole body. We resolved not to dispute or question any story that any one tells.

Mr. Hatch-I apprehend that the gentleman who asked this question asked it in earnest, and I do not feel like trifling with it. I believe it represents the condition of a great many. Now if the only hope for a man in such a condition is in the improvement of the soil and in improved crops, or in a bullhead pond, it may not

strike that young man's fancy as being applicable to himself. I have been in such circumstances, and have worked out, and the main element of success was a persistent following of my business; having but one business and attending to that, and believ ing in the old saying of Solomon, "Seest thou a man diligent in his business he shall sit among kings; " believing that those who earnestly and continually work in their professions, striving to become adepts at it, will be honored. I know this to be true. I never speculate. It took one of the best years of my life to learn that one lesson. Don't buy anything because you expect unusual returns from it without any investment. Make liberal investments in your business. If you have nothing to sell you can have nothing to pay your debts with, and no man is so far from market as he who has nothing to sell. Whenever I made an investment I considered that my creditors had an interest in that investment. I never considered myself at liberty to invest in lottery tickets, to buy stocks or anything of that nature whatever. I considered that every dollar invested was a dollar invested for my creditors as well as myself. I did not even consider my old cow my own. I always looked upon her as part and parcel of my creditors' assets until I got her paid for. And I tell you it was a relief. Now, how shall we improve ourselves? how shall we pay our debts? is the question this man wants to know. Now, how shall we make improvements? Mr. Anderson has struck the keynote and Mr. Smith has struck the keynote, when they say improve by the use of good culture; get good crops by good management; get good crops by fertilizing the soil; and there is no cheaper fertilizer in the world than clover-clover and plaster. Let us avoid speculative movements. Don't let us get hop fever, sorghum fever, bee fever, but develop the resources of the farm according to the circumstances in which we are situated. If there is an inaccessible side-hill not tillable, look then to pasturage, look to sheep husbandry, look to dairy stock growing, rearing of colts, rearing of calves, growing of grain. Always remember that what has been done can be done again. Mr. Babbitt — It seems to me f that young man would make up his mind positively that he had got to lose about three years,

and live largely on faith, and press that upon his creditors, and plow up as much land as he possibly could, sow it to clover, no matter how much he wants the hay, when it is up as large as he is satisfied he can get it, and in the best condition to plow under, plow it under, trusting in God.

The next season let him sow that same land to buckwheat. Undoubtedly it would furnish him a crop of about thirty bushels to the acre the next year. Let him remember that he has still got to have faith-a good deal of it. Let him when it is in the best condition to plow under, plow that under. Then let him put in his wheat, and if he don't get over thirty bushels to the acre then I will concede that there is no benefit whatever in that kind of farming. I give you the experience, gentlemen, of one of the best men you have in your body, a man that you have listened to with the greatest pleasure - Mr. J. W. Wood.

Mr. Clark I do not want to be misapprehended. A gentleman said that we could not cultivate a farm and improve the land by bullhead stories. I only wanted to demonstrate that the land must be manured. For ten years after I first moved into Dodge county bullheads were used for manure in the whole eastern part of our county. Hundreds of men were seen every day at the river taking away bullheads for manure.

You must im

prove the land to get any good out of it. I of course attempted to get a little amusement out of the story, but I told it just as it

was.

Mr. Webster-I have been a farmer and my plan from the first was to have a mixed husbandry. I found it paid to seed down with clover. I sent to Milwaukee and bought two bushels, and paid twenty dollars for the two bushels. It was tremendously high, but I had twenty dollars and I thought I would invest. I sowed that seed, and then I found that I needed something else, and sowed plaster; and by manuring, and keeping sheep, and rotation of crops, I find that my land to-day is richer than when I broke it up, I think. The greatest trouble has been for two or three years that I could not raise any wheat. My land was too rich. Clover and plaster will fetch up any land than I ever saw in our vicinity. I would recommend that above everything else.