"What was the result? I got ten bushels of wheat more per acre than had ever grown on the land before, without any manure or fertilizer having been applied since it grew the previous crop in the rotation. Clover had been grown. It was a clover sod. I didn't know how much came from the clover and how much from the tillage. I didn't care, they went together to get that result. I asked some of the old settlers how much had been grown there per acre during their recollection. They said twenty-three bushels was the most they had known. I got thirty-three. The neighbors said, 'It happened so, you can't do it again.' You know how they talk, to make out nothing can be done with an old farm. I was interested in doing it again. I paid that note and had a large margin of profit left, you see, out of the extra wheat. It all came right. "The next year I took the next field in rotation and worked it in the same way, probably more. I got thirteen bushels more wheat per acre than ever grew before. Thirty-six bushels of wheat! Such a thing was never heard of in our section before; land that would not grow anything a dozen years ago. Do you wonder I have been an enthusiast on tillage since then? Why, they call me a crank sometimes. It is a good crank, as it has turned out prosperity for us. "After a time I began to think, can't we carry this matter a little further? People generally don't cultivate their crops more than two or three times in a season. Can I cultivate more to advantage? I began to try it, six or eight times, eight or ten. I think there have been dry years when I have cultivated our potatoes as many as fifteen times. I don't believe we ever went through them when it didn't pay. "I remember one fall, when it was a wet season. When the tops began to die and got to the point where I could see the space between the rows, I started the cultivators again. I had money then to hire men and I hired plenty of them. I started to cultivate between the rows. People said, ' What is the idiot doing now?' I said, 'He is going to raise five bushels more by doing that work, that it what he is after.' "Now, remember, more hay to the acre, better hay, increased fertility by growing clover, increased fertility by working this land over and over in the different ways I have told you of. They used to send for me to talk on this subject, before I knew anything about it, except that I had done it. In Wisconsin, some twenty years ago, I helped at the first institute held in the state. They sent for me to come up. I told them what I was doing and how I thought it came about, what I thought clover was doing for me. When I was through I asked Professor Henry, who was in the audience, to tell me, honestly, what he thought about my talk. He said, 'As a farmer I believe you are right, but as a scientific man I dare not say so in public.'