Institute Is Closed

INSTITUTE IS CLOSED

With Some Fine Addresses and Papers

LOCAL TAXATION PLANS

Developed by Prof.Henry C. Adams.

Dr.Steere on Life in the Philippines. Dr. Boone, Prof.Smith and theres Speaks. Resolution and Officers.

The Farmers institute Thursday afternoon opened with a talk by Prof. J. B. Steere on "Life in the Philippines. " He said while the area of these islands was not exactly known it would not very much from 120,000 square miles and they were capable of supporting a population of 50,000,000. As to he climate there are two seasons the wet and dry. The rainy season corresponds closely with our summer and fall and the dry season to our winter and spring. The annual rainfall varies in different parts from 50 to 90 inches. The lands fit for cultivation can be divided into three classes alluvial lands plains of volcanic sands and mountain lands. Alluvial lands are those chiefly cultivated and are of great extent lying along the sea and about rivers, lakes and bays. The Christianized natives are estimated at eight or nine millions. They are a brown people not differing greatly from an American indian. They average about  5 feet 3 inches in height the women being about the same size as the men. The professor gave a description of the dress of the natives and also an interesting account of their homes and mode of life. Their houses, household furniture, foods and methods of cooking and eating, he said, are those of their savage ancestry modified and bettered as they have advanced in civilization. Their houses are primitive but are usually well kept. The people bathe frequently and their clothing is generally kept clean.

Except at Manila and some other large towns there is little division of labor. The Filipino is generally a farmer and fisher and hunter combined, while his wife is a weaver as well as a housekeeper and farm help. Each family usually posesses a few water buffaloes for cultivating their fields and when there is pasture they frequently own a number of small native ponies. These are used for riding and driving but not for farm beasts.

They keep a few swine but sheep and cattle are rarely seen. They are not large meat eaters. Each family usually owns a share in the irrigated rice fields of the neighborhood. The style of cultivation is exactly like that of the Chinaman. The whole family aids in gathering the harvest. There is but one crop a year although the Chinese of Formosa gather three. The cultivation of Manila hemp is quite general in a small way throughout the islands. -The cultivation of sugar, tobacco, coffee and indigo has been undertaken in quantities for export. The difficulty with these is not in the sods or climate but in the difficulty of getting sufficient regular labor. The Filipinos necessities are too easily satisfied and his luxuries too fine to make continuous labor necessary. Those people are too much like the Chinaman and the Hindoo to migrate much. Prof. Smith's talk was most interesting throughout, but should have been heard or read in full to be properly appreciated.

Prof. D. C. Smith followed with an interesting talk on farm crops.

It is nature's method to grow plants from the soil, the plants to be food for animals, which return the fertilizing elements of the plants to the soil. Hence the ground, soil, plant, animal, manure, and again soil, plant and animal. No farm can maintain its fertility where nature's methods are forgotten. It is sometimes thought, for instance, that a farmer can keep on growing crops year after year without keeping stock, if he will but return to the soil, in the form of commercial fertilizers, the fertilizing element carried away in those crops. The fallacy of this proposition lies in the fact that one of the chief benefits of barnyard manure is that it adds decaying organic matter to the land. The function of this decaying or organic matter is to increase the water holding capacity of the soil. By certain experiments, it has been shown that by applying approximately 10 loads of manure to an acre the per cent of water in the land in the midst of a subsequent drouth was nearly doubled and the yield of potatoes correspondingly increased, not because of the plant food in the manure so much as because of this increment in the needed water supply. For every pound of harvest the cereals ueed fully 800 pounds of water during growth. The rainfall during the growing season is insufficient to furnish a full harvest, hence the need of keeping the water holding capacity of the soil as high as possible. Applications of barnyard manure or plowing under green crops will do this but commercial fertilizers will not.

Prevent loss of water by frequent shallow cultivation of hoed crops like corn, potatoes or sugar beets. Clover is the backbone of Michigan agriculture. Where a clover crop yields a ton and a half of cured hay per acre, its roots contain fully as much plant food as 10 ordinary load of barnyard manure per acre. The corn field should be harrowed with a slanting tooth harrow as soon as it is planted and the harrowing repeated at frequent intervals until the corn is three inches high when the two horse cultivator may supplant the harrow or weeder. Plow clay ground in the fall for oats. On the contrary sow rye in the corn at the last cultivation on sandy soil and plow under in the spring for oats.

Plow oat stubble early and cultivate repeatedly and thoroughly before sowing wheat.

Draw manure to the 'field as it is made, during winter. There is little or no loss of plant food when the snow water runs away.

One of the best lectures of the entire institute was Prof. H. C. Adams' talk on "Local Taxation." It was a most logical presentation of the evils of the present system and the speaker in each case suggested a remedy. Prof. Adams spoke in part as follows:

For two reasons the American citizen is interested in questions of local taxation. "In the first place he is called upon to contribute at the rate of about $75 per family for the support of government; and, in the second place, although the law requires that a tax must be for a public purpose and apportioned equitably as between tax payers, there is no effective means of securing compliance with the law except through the ballot. It is necessary, therefore, that the citizen should be well informed on these questions. The American people still retain for local finance the old "general property tax." The theory of this tax is, that the value of property always equals the capitalization of the income derived from it, and, threfore, that when men pay in proportion to property, they pay in proportion to their income. Without discussing the correctness of this theory, the result, of its application are far from satisfactory. Two evils may be mentioned. First: it leads everywhere to under valuation of property thus showing that the law cannot be perfectly administered ; and, second, it is found impossible for the assessor to discover and assess personal property. The lecturer introduced diagrams which showed these results in a clear and convincing manner. The explanation of undervaluation is, that local assessments are used as the basis of the tax levy for state purposes and should the assessor of one township assess property at its full value, while the assessor of another township assessed property at half its value, the amount of taxes paid in the former even at the same rate, would be twice as great for the same property as in the latter. Two remedies were suggested. Thus the assessor might be a state officer, but this was dismissed because such a step would be unfriendly to local self government; the better way would be to separate the finances of the state from the finances of the local governments, give to each a source of revenue and permit each to manage its own affairs. This would mean that the property in an agricultural district would be assessed for the support of local government, and be excused from making any further payments. Undervaluation would then come to be a matter of no importance.

The greater difficulty in the administration of the general property tax lies in the fact that personal property evades taxation. The speaker reviewed the laws which Michigan had planned for the purpose of getting at this species of property and showed why they failed. His proposals were two. First ; the establishment of comprehensive and systematic corporation taxes under the supervision of the state, which in connection with inheritance taxes should be constituted the souroe of state revenue. It would not be necessary to tax stocks and bonds in the hands of individuals, if the business from which dividends and interest accrue should pay for the support of government all that is rightly due from such a business. The proposal was, to tax the corporation and let the stockholder and the bondholder go free; or to put it in another way, to tax the stockholder and the bondholder through the corporation. Evasion would by this means be rendered impossible. But there is another form of personal property, namely mortgages and such like credits. To solve this part of the problem it was proposed that mortgages should be excused from taxation. No injustice would be done, for the reduced rate at which the borrower could borrow money, would more than offset the tax paid by him on that portion of the value of his farm covered by a mortgage. There is no reason except in the uncertainty which attends the loaning of money on farm lands, why a farmer should not borrow money at a rate nearly as low as the federal government. One way of reducing interest would be to openly and avowedly remit mortgages from taxation.

The evening sessions was taken up with an address by President Boone, of the State Normal college, on "Education and the Farming Interests. "

In the modern industrial system the tendency of a division of labor in the mechanic arts and in the professions, appears in duplicate among the graziers and farmers also. Each interests himself in his immediate labor, and it easily excludes other labor not only from his hands and from his pocket, but from his mind as well. This is a narrowing of life to an interest in mere doing that is cramping and starving. People of every employment, farmers included, have need to expand living to include a sympathy with, and an understanding of the common life.

Farming is still empirical and looks to experience. Perhaps it must always do so more or less - probably more rather than less. But it is becoming reflective. This is the significance of agricultural colleges not alone or chiefly that, as a first effect, farming should be better, but that farmers should be better. With the more thoughtful men, more broadly and less selfish men, there will in time be more thoughtful farnring. The certain and rational order is not that manhood is improved through improving man's art; but that all real improvement of industrial art is finally dependent upon the elevation of the man and his habits of life.

The literature of interest to farmers is now rapidly multiplying It is said that the earliest book in this country upon distinctively agricultural interests was Tull's Horse-Shoeing Husbandry published about 1733. The true study of the theory of soil culture dates from a period almost a century later, beginning with the chemical experiments and analysis of soils of such men as Davy and Liebig. Along with' Biology and Sociology, Scientific farming is a product of the present century.

Prior to the civil war there were not to exceed a score of books on these subjects published. The largest service had been rendered during this first half century through the publication and wide use of farmers' school and library books. The old township libraries of three or more of the Northwestern states had many volumes about the middle of the century and these had many readers. They had their place, and did a good work. If one were sure of their being used in the midst of so much of the present day's light reading, one might wish for one more trial at their pages.

But the great need of the farmer after this literature that touches his immediate occupation, is a literature that takes him periodically and frequently away in thought from his occupation. There are only a few great interests that follow the thinking world and claim its attention. Only a few great books which one can not afford not to know, only a few great questions that are of perennial moment and recurring interest. Even more than the urban citizen, the farmer needs this initiation to a wider life. His work is confining. His interests are provincial. He needs to know what men are doing if he can not, as does his city friends, meet them often and on the plane of common purposes. This interest in the reflective achievements of the race seems to be the present great need of many of us - the class whom you represent included.

The Institute passed the following resolution :

Whereas the board of regents of the University of Michigan has, for the second time, extended to the State Board of Agriculture an invitation to hold the "state round up" of farmers' institutes at the University ; and whereas, this association believes that no better place can be found in the state for this "round up", therefore be it resolved that we, of the institute, who are now assembled at Ann Arbor, as the State Institute for Washtenaw county, ask the Board of Agriculture to hold the" state round up' for 1900 at the University of Michigan; and be it further resolved, that a copy of these resolution be sent to the Superintendent of Institutes and to the State Board of Agriculture.

The institute also passed the following:

Resolved, that this Farmers' Institute fully appreciates the delightful music furnished by the University Glee Club and by the soloists of that organization and extends to the Glee Club its hearty thanks.

The Institute also elected a full list of officers, re-electing William Campell, president and F. E. Mills secretary and treasurer.