each of
these boys was one hundred and twenty-seven bushels, and the total
profit on their corn crop was $12,500.

Records made by individual boys through the Southern States run very
high. Claude McDonald, of Hamer, S. C., raised 210-4/7 bushels at a cost
of 33.3c a bushel. Junius Hill, of Attalla, Ala., raised 212-1/2
bushels. Ben Leath, of Kensington, Ga., raised 214-5/7 bushels. John
Bowen, of Grenada, Miss., raised 221-1/5 bushels. Eber A. Kimbrough,
Alexander City, Ala., raised 224-3/4 bushels; and Bebbie Beeson,
Monticello, Miss., raised 227-1/16 bushels.[25] These boys were all
State prize winners.

There are several things worthy of note about these record yields.
Practically all of the high yields were made on deeply ploughed, widely
separated rows. The record made by Bennie Beeson (227-1/16 bushels, at a
cost of fourteen cents per bushel) was secured on dark, upland soil,
with a clay sub-soil, ploughing to a depth of ten inches, rows three
feet apart, hills six inches apart, with ten cultivations. Beeson used
5-1/2 tons of manure and eight dollars' worth of other fertilizer on his
acre. The seed corn was New Era. Barnie Thomas, who grew 225 bushels on
rich, sandy loam, ploughed nine inches, planted his rows three and
one-half feet apart, and kept the hills ten inches apart. He cultivated
six times, and selected his own seed from the field. Many of the boys
making the fine records developed and selected their own seed. One boy,
with an acre yield of 124.9 bushels, cleared six hundred and ninety-five
dollars, counting prizes. Another boy, with a yield of 97-4/5 bushels,
reports that his father's yield was thirty bushels. John Bowen, with a
yield of 221-1/5 bushels, reports the yield on nearby acres as forty
bushels. Arthur Hill, with 180-3/5 bushels, reports the nearby yields as
twenty bushels.

Such figures, uncertified, would challenge the credulity of the
uninitiated. The land on which these record yields were secured had been
raising twenty, forty, and fifty bushels of corn to the acre. Over great
sections, the per acre average was well under twenty. Into this
desolation of agricultural inefficiency, a few thousand school boys
entered. Under careful supervision and proper guidance, with little
additional expenditure of money or of time, they produced results wholly
unbelievable to the old-time farmer. Yet he saw the crop, husked, and
watched it through the sheller. There was no magic and no chicanery. He