Business English: A Practice Book by Rose Buhlig

Remember you do not know the daughter. =Exercise 300= Write the following from dictation: 1 MUST REFORM OUR FARMING The average yield of wheat in the United States for the five years ending in 1910 was eight-tenths of a bushel per acre more than in the five years ending in 1905, but it was less than four-tenths of a bushel more than for the ten ending in 1900. The average corn product for the ten years ending in 1910 was a little less than for the ten years ending in 1875. Thirty-five years had not advanced us a step. European countries--Great Britain, France, Germany--with inferior soils and less favorable climate produce crops practically double our own. In our studies of conservation we find no waste comparable, either in magnitude or importance, to this. The farm will fail, and the foundations of our prosperity be undermined, unless agriculture is reformed. The percentage of our people actively engaged in farming had fallen from 47.36 in 1870 to an estimated 32 in 1910. Every man on the farm to-day must produce food for two mouths against one forty years ago. --_J. J. Hill._ 2 THE FARMING SPECIALS One of the latest and most successful activities of the railroads is the practice of carrying knowledge of the best farming methods to the farmers by means of special trains equipped like agricultural colleges. These trains, bearing experts and all the equipment for exhibiting the new methods of agriculture, bring the knowledge to the farmers free, and the railroads are glad to give it, for every bit of knowledge comes back to them in a hundred fold profit in freight. In the summer eager audiences all over the country listen to the preaching of better methods and larger crops. Dozens of special trains travel through the agricultural regions disseminating information. The "Breakfast Bacon Special" has been run to encourage Iowa farmers to raise more hogs to take advantage of the high price of bacon. The Cotton Belt Route southwest of St. Louis runs the "Squealer Special" to prove to the Arkansas and Panhandle farmers the money-making advantages of blooded hogs over the razor-back variety. Down the Mississippi Valley the Illinois Central sends the "Boll Weevil Special" to conduct a campaign against that pest. The Harriman lines have six trains operating in California every year. In one year they visited more than seventy-five thousand people. Better farming specials run in practically every state south of the Ohio and Potomac and west of the Mississippi. The New York Central also has two trains in operation in New York.--_The Business Almanac._ 3 A large proportion of farmers give little or no attention to the selection of seed; yet it has been demonstrated that a careful selection would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the total value of the crops. If, for example, a variety of wheat were developed capable of producing one more kernel to the head, it would mean an addition, so Burbank says, of 15,000,000 bushels to our average wheat crop. It is possible, however, to do even more than this. At the Minnesota station a variety, selected for ten years according to a definite principle, yielded twenty-five per cent more than the parent variety. Applied to our average crop, that increase would amount to 185,000,000 bushels, worth about $140,000,000. As for corn, it has been officially stated that our average yield could easily be doubled. After exhaustive experiments the Department of Agriculture says that by merely testing individual ears of seed corn and rejecting those of low vitality an average yield of nearly fourteen per cent could be secured, adding about $200,000,000 to the value of the crop. Does scientific seed selection seem worth while?--_The Wall Street Journal._