TEE SOIL AS AN ECONOMIC FACTOR. 539 



THE SOIL AS AN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL FACTOR. 



By frank K. CAMERON, 



U. S. DBPAHTMKNT OF AGRICULTUBE. 



THERE is no part of the material world about us that is more inti- 

 mately connected with the general welfare of the people than the 

 soil. It has often been said, and well said, that it is the foundation of 

 agriculture, in more senses than one. And the importance of agricul- 

 ture in our present social systems is too well understood to justify any 

 further comment here. 



For practically a century the study of soils, and the phenomena 

 they present, has received the attention of some of the ablest and most 

 distinguished savants the ranks of science have held. Much is now 

 known about soils from the point of view of the geologist, the physicist, 

 the chemist and the bacteriologist. Much more is yet to be learned, 

 and this perhaps is not the least interesting feature of the subject to 

 one of a philosophic or scientific turn of mind. But when the geologist, 

 the physicist, the chemist and the bacteriologist have brought together 

 all the data and material of which they are capable, and have presented 

 it to the world in accessible form, it is evident that but a very small 

 part of the study of soils has been accomplished, or can be accom- 

 plished, by them. 



It is necessary, as this paper will endeavor to show, that upon the 

 labors of those investigators who have worked from the point of view 

 of the natural sciences, the economist and the sociologist must build for 

 the best development and use of the soil. They seem, up to the present, 

 to have given very little attention to the subject, and the general 

 knowledge of it seems to be summed up in the saying — *A poor soil, a 

 poor people; a rich soil, a rich people.' This aphorism is in fact the 

 immediate text of this paper. It implies what is apparently self-evi- 

 dent — that the soil is an economic factor because upon its character 

 and the treatment of it depends the success of agricultural operations; 

 and it is a social factor because the character of the soil in a very large 

 measure determines the character of the people living upon it. The 

 causal connection between the typical Yankee's well-known character- 

 istics and his peculiar soils and environments has become almost classi- 

 cal in our literature. That which exists between some of the poor white 

 communities in our Southern States and their soils is even more obvious. 

 And just as striking are the opposite conditions on some of the rich 

 limestone soils of our eastern states, or some of the intensely cultivated, 

 rich, irrigated districts of the west. 



