is the "Breakfast Bacon Special." There was a shortage of three million hogs at the six chief packing centers during the first six months of 1910. At these same points the shortage during 1909 was five million carcasses. The people who were hungry for the pork and bacon from these eight million hogs had to satisfy their appetites with canned salmon or turn vegetarians. By rights, pork should be the poor man's meat. While a steer makes but five or six pounds of meat from a bushel of corn, a hog will make ten or twelve. But the man who has breakfasted on bacon very many times during the past year has seen very little reason for calling pork cheap meat. The result of the shortage in the pork supply sent prices skyward. They reached a point higher than at any time since the Civil War. The farmers who were fortunate enough to be "long" on hogs reaped a rich harvest. As a typical instance, a farmer in Illinois who keeps books figured up his profits on a car-load of hogs, and found that they paid him $1.25 a bushel for all the corn they had eaten. For once, at least, he had the laugh on his neighbors who hauled their corn to the elevator at 55 cents a bushel. And when it comes to his children and grandchildren, they will, to a still greater extent, have the laugh on the children and grandchildren of his grain-farming neigh

bors. Every time a

bushel of corn is

marketed by the hog route only 3 cents' worth of fertility is

taken from the farm. When the corn itself is hauled away, 18 cents' worth of fertility is taken with every bushel.

If all of these things are true, why don't the farmers raise more hogs? Well, it is due to

habit, largely. They are not used to caring for hogs, and they think it is more difficult than it really is. Some of them fear the cholera. They have been through a siege of it, maybe, and they know from bitter experience what it means. to have the year's profits swept away in a few days. They have heard of the serum treatment, perhaps, but they are skeptical. It will take much teaching and demonstration to convince them that the Government veterinarians have really discovered a treatment that is a sure preventive of the dread disease. The main thing that these farmers need is a little explanation, a little clearing up of the points about the hog business of which they are not quite sure.

It was with this thought in mind that Agricultural Commissioner H. M. Cottrell, of the Rock Island lines, joined with the hog experts of the State Agricultural College of Iowa to jar the farmers into a realization of the profits of hog culture. While they are urging the farmer to go into the hog business to make money for himself, they are not neglectful of the demands

of the laborer for cheaper ham. They are showing the farmer how to produce pork on clover or alfalfa pasture for three or four cents a pound. With pork produced at this price, it would be a very selfish farmer who would still claim that he should still have ten cents on

the hoof for his hogs.

The hog experts are urging the farmers to eliminate the waste, to put the hog business on a strict business basis. In Iowa twenty-five per cent of the hogs that are farrowed never live to reach the packing-house. Most of this loss is due to improper feeding of the sow and lack of

attention at farrowing time. The average sized litter raised in Iowa is four. If that number could be increased to six, it would add four million to the annual hog crop of the State.

At every one of the 137 stations where the special made its half-hour stops it was met by enthusiastic crowds. The farmers and their wives came in wagons and buggies and automobiles. The merchants and bankers locked their doors and came down to the train in force. The teachers came marching down to the train at the head of their flocks. At one place a conference of Presbyterian preachers adjourned by unanimous consent and came down to hear the lecture on hog culture. One lady eighty-five years old came down to hear the lecture on domestic science. "I expect to cook pork for a good many years yet," she smiled, as an attendant helped her aboard. One old gentleman, disregarding the shouted instructions of the attendants to "take the front car," made his way back to the ladies' car. My wife makes me get up and get breakfast in the morning," he said. "I'm tired of toast, and I want to learn how to fry bacon." Almost every one came to learn. The few who came to scoff usually "remained to pray."

66

The actual results of the special trains are, of course, rather hard to determine with any degree of accuracy. It has been long enough since the first trains were run, however, so that a comparison of the crop yields shows some interesting figures.

In 1904 the first special agricultural trains were run. They reached 670 towns in 97 counties out of 99 in the State. The total distance traveled was 10,000 miles, in the course of which 1,085 talks were given and 127,000 people were

reached. During the five years just previous to 1904 the average corn yield in Iowa was 33.5 bushels. The average for the five years following the advent of the special trains was 35.9 bushels. A fiveyear average should be sufficient to eliminate differences due to the varying weather conditions. The increase of 2.4 bushels to the acre must be attributed largely to better methods. A large share of the credit for the dissemination of these better methods belongs to the special trains. For the last five years the average acreage of corn in the State has been nearly nine million acres. The average farm price for the five years has been 39 cents. At this rate the value of the increased corn yields has been worth over eight million dollars a year.

While the cities are boasting of the added thousands or millions for which the new Census gives them credit, the farmer is looking at the matter from a different angle. On him rests the burden of supplying these additional millions with food. The problem is not so simple as it was twenty-five years ago, when the wants of each added million could be met by opening new farms in the West. are few new farms to open. must by hook or crook get his soil. At this stage of the game the Nation needs men who can increase crop production more than it needs men who can corner the stock markets or get themselves elected to Congress.

To-day there

The farmer more out of

In the face of these facts it is little wonder that the railways are asking for more special trains, or that the farmers leave their plows in the fields when they hear the whistle of the special train. The college on wheels seems to have come to stay.

F

IFTEEN years ago we discovered Ronda. We had landed at Gibraltar in a cold March rain. Two weeks we had allotted ourselves for a first glimpse of Spain, and, with Western notions of travel, we were counting on Granada, Seville, Cordova, and the Prado at Madrid, not to mention several lesser points of interest. But we had reckoned without our Spain. Barely had we elbowed our way to our hotel through the seething, shrieking mass of men and beasts which make a Babel of the streets at the foot of the mountain of Tarik than we were informed that the one railway running from Algeciras across the bay up into Spain had been washed out by the spring rains. Not a train had run between Algeciras and Ronda, thirty miles to the north, for sixty days.

"We must go by boat, then, to Malaga or Cadiz," we quickly decided, fearing for our look at the Prado. But the boat service, too, was interrupted. Since a recent storm one of the local steamers had been missing, and all the others were out seaching for her.

Our anxious inquiries as to when the road might be in order or the boats running were met by a shrug and outspread palms. "Quien sabe?" Only time could tell. "Acaso manaña! acaso no!" Not only the Prado, but all the rest of our hoped-for look at Spain threatened to be swallowed up by this unexpected and, we soon learned, most Spanish suspension of the facilities of travel. We were in despair, for, although we had already discovered the fascinations of the Gib, we did

At this desperate moment an enterprising fellow-traveler suggested horses to Ronda, from which point the railway appeared to be running. "Splendid!" we cried. "But what about Ronda? What kind of a place is it? Could ladies spend the night there?" The information elicited by these questions was not very promising as to creature comforts, but most alluring as to Ronda's mediæval atmosphere and extraordinary beauty of situation. We recalled, too, the siege of Ronda in Irving's "Conquest." We would go to Ronda on horseback.

But we did not go to Ronda on horseback. No one would furnish us horses, or even mules. "The roads were impossible; we would mire at every step." But by the time we were able to leave Gibraltar on a tramp steamer for Malaga, when the delay had rendered Madrid and the Prado impossible, our disappointment was measurably lessened by the prospect of a stop at Ronda instead, on our way back.

Our train puffed up to the little town after dark. We saw the usual bare and characterless wooden station, feebly lighted by flickering oil lamps. The few attendants were lolling half asleep when we rolled up to the platform, but no sooner had we descended than pandemonium was let loose. Evidently visitors from overseas were rare birds in this mountain nest, and every man of them wished to have a hand in the bestowal of our persons and our luggage in the creaking and protesting omnibus which was expected to transport us to the only possible hotel.

I say "expected to" advisedly, for there appeared to be no certainty about it. The road was evidently totally unfit for the passage of wheels; and to our apprehensive senses the aged and loose-jointed vehicle constantly threatened to fall to pieces and deposit us in the road. We plunged, lunged, and swayed over stones and into ruts; but fate was kind, and we finally pulled up in front of a door in a whitewashed wall from which streamed a welcome radiance. The labor of unloading ourselves and our belongings was not without its difficulties. News of our arrival had spread through the town, and

growing crowd desirous of seeing these strange creatures who came to Ronda from such a vast distance. But el posadero came to the rescue, and with the aid of loud and evidently strong language, emphasized by frequent blows, we were at last disembarked and safe inside the door.

It was much better than we feared. There was a tiny court paved with red bricks, with a circular depression in the middle, presumably for a fountain, although then dry. Rooms, mostly small and of confusing irregularity, opened from this court. Somewhere a crooked stairway mounted to a second story. There were smells of strange foods, but they were not unappetizing, and everything appeared to be most scrupulously clean. We had been to Granada, to Cordova, and to Seville, but already, before we had seen anything of Ronda save tantalizing glimpses caught through rents in the curtains of our decrepit omnibus, we realized that this was different. Here was the real Spain.

As we sat at dinner the strangeness of it, together with occasional surprises to our protesting palates, mounted to our heads. Running through the middle of the table was a long row of black bottles, twenty-five or more, all apparently empty. A special course of long, thin asparagus, whose appearance was hailed with delight, but whose unexpected bitterness caused many a grimace, still remains in my memory. Then there was music, not the suave, obvious melodies to which our ears were accustomed, but the weird, wailing cadences of the East. It was not cheerful or enlivening, but, by the rule of contraries, it went to our heels. A dance in the brick court was suggested, and the rather undignified romp which followed doubtless left in the minds of our bewildered posadero the impression that the inhabitants of America were still savage. During a breathless pause in our hilarity some one glanced through the door into the street. Apparently the entire town was gathered there, spellbound by what they saw. Then we fled to our rooms.

The next morning the town lay before us, and we soon found that the half had not been told. All day long we wandered along the brows of steep bluffs and through