The circulars from your Secretary were sent out to the different townships and a summary of the answers are as follows: The average wages paid adult farm hands per month, with board, is $12; without board, $20 to $25. About an equal number of married and single men are employed. Foreign classes are in the majority. There are five silos in the county. Reports say that silos are losing in favor with the farmers. No new silos built this year. Green corn, oats and clover are used for silage. None of our farmers depend upon soiling rather than pasturing for the support of their cattle during the summer months. Root crops are not grown to any extent as a winter feed. The milk business is reported on the increase, excepting in one township. Wheat and almost all grain crops are receiving less attention than ten years ago. Fruit and vegetables, hay and dairy productions are receiving more attention. Very few farmers are engaged in sheep raising. It costs too much for fencing, damages by dogs, low price of mutton and wool, are given as the reasons. One report says that sheep raising is considered injurious to mowing ground. The raising and fattening of hogs is on the increase in some sections of the county, and in others, on the decrease. No hog cholera reported. The poultry interest is increasing. Cholera and roup are the prevailing diseases. From five to twenty-five per cent are lost. Not as many cattle fattened for market as a few years ago. The reasons given are stock cattle cost too much, and it does not pay to raise a young steer for beef. There is too little difference in the price per pound of the stock steer and the fatted one, and besides, the Chicago dressed beef and low freights shut out the market for home raised and slaughtered beef. Farmers do not raise calves from their own stock to keep up their cattle supply, but buy Western and Northern stock, mostly the latter. No disease reported in our county from cattle from other States. Three townships report Holsteins as the most popular breed for dairy purposes; others, grade Jersey and Alderney. Creameries are not on the increase. There are three in the county. No special action has been taken for the general improvement of the roads and streets. The question of the new road law has been much discussed, and would be favorably received in this county. All say that most of the money raised by taxes for the roads is wasted, at least but temporary benefits received. The plan of forming up the road bed and covering all with broken stone is considered the only feasible plan. Our farmers are not satisfied. The reasons given are, rate of interest too high, taxes too high, prices of products too low, insufficient home markets and wages high. One report says, farmers ought to buy as many pounds of wheat bran as they raise pounds of corn, and feed it all for milk, also feed their clover hay and oats, and sell their timothy hay, wheat and milk with from fifty to one hundred spring pigs in the fall. In this way he says farmers would soon be on the high road to wealth. Another report says, farmers' and agriculturists' greatest need is more lime, barnyard manure and common sense; and another says, a more definite recognition and interest in agriculture by the general government. Farmers generally receive benefit from the bulletins of the Experiment Station. All read them who receive them, and they appreciate the analysis of fertilizers, and to some extent, use them as a guide when purchasing. The Weather Signal Service is used to a limited extent by our farmers as a guide in gathering their crops, and could be of greater service if bulletins were sent daily to every post-office, which was done at one time, but I am informed has been discontinued. As a market crop, the peach and apple are planted quite extensively, but no vines or small fruits. No spraying of fruit trees or vines has been practiced, excepting Paris Green on potato vines and hellebore on currant bushes. A combined effort should be made by the State Board of Agriculture to better the present condition of the farmers. First. To lower the rate of interest on farm mortgages, and, Second. To lower the rate of farm tax, if possible. Third. To improve the system of working the roads. Fourth. To create a righteous indignation against trusts, combines and monopolies, which will outlive the farmers, unless public sentiment can be roused to the necessity of the case, as to which is the fittest to survive. Fifth. The spraying of trees with poisonous liquids to destroy insects. Sixth. To show our appreciation of the Experiment Station, which has saved the farmers of New Jersey thousands of dollars. Seventh. To boldly declare for any legislation, State or National, that will benefit the farmers, regardless of politics. HON. WILLIAM OWEN, Vernon, N. J. ...Hamburg, N. J. ..... .Wantage, N. J. ..Deckertown, N. J. ANNUAL REPORT. BY JOHN LOOMIS, SECRETARY. At the annual meeting, held November 10th, 1888, the following named gentlemen were appointed delegates to the State Board of Agriculture: John Loomis and J. A. McBride. Another year's report to the parent Agricultural Society of our State is due, reminding us of the many cares and anxieties of our business as agriculturists, and while we have had an abundant yield of almost all kinds of crops, the net results of the year, when turned into cash, are likely to be very unsatisfactory, as compensation for the great amount of labor and expense to accomplish so small net results, and our minds are naturally turned to the consideration of the question, why it is that the farmer of New Jersey is called upon to do so great an amount of hard labor, wearing out himself and family, year after year, and receiving so little compensation for it. The trouble is, though the agricultural interests of the country are the backbone of the whole of our nation's existence and success, there is not enough concentrated action among us to secure our just rights. Let us consider for a little while some of the wrongs that we, in Sussex county, believe to exist, and that tend continually to destroy the agricultural interests of our State. One of the wrongs that farmers have to contend with in New Jersey is the unreasonable amount of freight paid to get their produce to market. No State in the Union is so imposed upon, in the way of freight charges, as New Jersey. Corporations running through our State charge more for the delivery of our freight coming from the West, into the middle of our State, than to deliver it in New York or along the seaboard; and milk trains in our State, running in no case over seventy-five miles, cost us forty cents a can of forty quarts; and only thirty-two cents per can to run milk from Pennsylvania or New York-from two to three hundred miles-from sections where land is cheaper by fifty per cent. than ours, delivering the milk on the platform, at Hoboken or Jersey City. Again, when we are obliged to pay as much to run a car of feed twenty to fifty miles as the western farmer pays to run it two or three hundred miles, is it any wonder that our farmers complain of being neglected by the law making powers? To make it plain, I will give a case coming under my own observation: A farmer, living in our neighborhood, keeps between sixty and seventy cows; he has three hundred and fifty acres of land, and averages about nine forty-quart cans of milk daily, the year round. For about one-third of the year he sold his milk at $1.20 per can, the freight being forty cents per can, for less than seventy-five miles. Now, you see that the conveyance |