8 "Che Conservative.
ill honor of Secretary Morton , of my
state , which with three large horses and
one man can bo made to do the work
which , before I learned of it , cost me
the labor of two men and seven horses.
Before possessing this make of plough ,
the land was fitted by using three
horses on the regular plough and four
horses on the subsoil plough following
it in the same furrow.
I could talk for hours upon the im
portance of conserving moisture in this
region , which , now that we have begun
to use the alfalfa plant , will become one
of the most valuable regions for agricul
ture in the United States. But time
will not permit , and we will pass to the
cutting of the hay.
Cutting and Curing the Hay.
My experience is that it should bo cut
as near as possible when it is in full
bloom. Having so large an area , this
necessitates oxittiug a portion of mine
before it commences to bloom at all.
No cutting is done in the morning until
the dew is off , that the alfalfa may fallen
on woll-warnied ground. The men are
employed before that time in cultivat
ing other crops and destroying weeds
generally , using a hand-hoe when
necessary. As soon as the hay is thor
oughly wilted it is raked into small
windrows , from which it is gathered
later by buck-rakes into stacks. As a
rule there are three men on the stack ,
four men on the buck-rakes , one man to
attend the stacker , and a boy to guide
the team used with the stacker. There
is a large loss of leaves attending this
process , and had I a small area the hey
would be gathered as I was taught to
cure red clover in New England , by
cocking it and letting it cure in the
cock , after which it was immediately
hauled to the barn that it might not get
wet. As it is , what hay will be neces
sary for the dairy cows and breeding
ewes and perhaps for all of my rumin
ating animals will hereafter be cured in
the cock , as I am certain that the ad
ditional cost of curing it that way will
be more than compensated by the in
creased value of the hay. While there
is no more valuable forage for cattle ,
sheep , colts or hogs than well-cured
alfalfa , so also there is no hay which
can receive greater damage from wet
ting. Because of this I will hereafter
put as much of it as possible in barns
and sheds. I will put the remainder in
stacks , which I shall protect with stack
covers , which are now manufactured
for that purpose.
How to Kill Out Alfalfa.
When wo wish to kill out alfalfa , that
we may use the field for orcharding or
other purposes , we plough it in August ,
using three horses to a very sharp plough
with a rolling colter. About a mouth
later we plow again in the other direc
tion , leaving the furrows open , that we
-JBBk.
may collect all of the moisture possible
from the frosts and storms of winter.
In regard to the feeding value of
alfalfa , my experience along this line
has not been-as exhaustive as the ex
periments conducted at the various
state experiment stations , to some of
which I will briefly refer later. There
is one thing , however , which it may be
well for me to tell you , particularly as
it is generally understood that alfalfa
makes poor horse feed , and so it does
for driving horses. In July , 1894 , find
ing myself without old hay or grain ,
and no corn to be had for less than
sixty cents per bushel , I was compelled
to depend entirely upon new alfalfa hay
to feed some eighty work horses for
more than thirty days , during which
time they were worked unusually hard ,
as I was trying to subdue a swamp
which was , in many places , veiy diffi
cult to plough. During this time the
horses were maintained in their usual
condition of health and fleshalthough I
believe it better practice to feed some
grain , in connection with the alfalfa , to
all horses when hard worked. Since
that time I have fed all my work horses
on well-cured alfalfa , choosing for this
purpose cuttings when the plant was
passing out of bloom , having learned
that there was more protein in alfalfa
cut late.
I will relate one other experience : In
April , 1895,1 turned sixty hogs , some of
which were brood sows , into an eight-
acre piece of alfalfa and kept them
there all summer without grain , during
which time they increased to 120 in
number. In the early fall a little corn
was given them to help out the alfalfa
as the number of hogs increased. It is
my judgment that a little ground grain
should be given to growing pigs when
pastured on alfalfa , to stimulate their
growth and harden them.
Feeding Alfalfa.
The subject of feeding alfalfa is so
important to all who grow it that I
have spared no pains to learn what
others have found out along this line ,
and it may interest you to learn of a
cattle-feeding experiment at Fort Col
lins , Colo. , conducted in the winter of
1894-95 , by Prof. W. W. Cooke , agri
culturalist at the Colorado State Exper
iment Stationwhich was very thorough
in its character in fact , practically
exhaustive. In that experiment it was
fed with corn costing there forty-two
cents per bushel , and the results ob
tained in one pen gave a value of $17.70
per ton for the alfalfa. From another
pen the return was but $8.12 per ton ,
*
yet the average for all pens was $11.80
per ton. In connection with this test
was another which will furnish food for
thought to all who desire to receive the
largest returns for their feed and
efforts : that of feeding to animals of
various ages , as follows : To four-year-
olds , $8 ; to two-year-olds , $10.60 , and to
yearlings $16 per ton , showing just
twice as much per ton for the alfalfa
when fed to yearlings as when fed to
four-year-old steers ; another argument
for letting the other fellow do the feed
ing after the animal is from eighteen
months to two years old , according to
its development.
At the Michigan Experiment Station ,
in a sheep-feeding test conducted by
Prof. Herbert W. Mumford , in Septem
ber , 1896 , it was found that alfalfa
made a return of twelve dollars per ton
when fed in connection with corn at
thirty cents per bushel a better gain
at less cost than was made with any
other hay.
Kearney , Neb. , Aug. 18 , 1901.
LAWS THAT OUGHT TO BE RE
PEALED.
[ Speech delivered by J. Sterling Morton be
fore the National Association of Merchants
and Travelers at the Auditorium Hotel , Chicago
cage , Sept. 10,1001. ]
Gentlemen of the National Association
of Merchants and Travelers :
Preceding its historic career the hu
man race was unanimous in its savagery.
The remote ancestors of twentieth cen
tury mankind subsisted by the chase.
Each barbaric hunter depended upon his
physical prowess for the protection of
his life , liberty and the acquisitions of
his individual efforts. The evolution
from nomadic huntsmen to pastoral
herdsmen seems to have been slow and
toilsome , without annals a mere blank
in the youth-time of the breeds of men.
Thence was taken the upward stride
towards permanentized civilization and
from a merely pastoral existence , man
entered upon the tillage of the soil , and
finally upon agriculture in general with
its concomitant branches of horticulture
and viticulture. Somewhere in his
mind-developing progress the natural
rights of man .were discovered and es
tablished , and they were primarily the
right to life , the right to liberty , and the
right to the earnings of the person. In
the pre-legislative era each man was
obliged to defend these rights for him
self. Thus individual might alone pro
tected ; but in time , as the intellectual
faculties of the race strengthened , it was
with unanimity proclaimed that all
should stand together for the defence of
the rights of each. And this proclama
tion was the very beginning of the found
ations for statute laws.
The professions of law-giving , of law-
administering and of practicing law are
therefore only evolutions from the prim
itive assertion of the natural rights of a
person to life , liberty and his legitimate
earning. Thus plainly it is discernible
that the laws under which we live are a
normal outgrowth from the assertion
of our natural rights by our far-back
barbaric ancestors when they began
to drift towards civilization. Human
rights , then , were not born of statutes
nor originated by law-makers. But out
of those rights as originally acknowl
edged have emerged all of the laws of
all the nations of the civilized earth.
Those statutes that ought to be