548 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



acres, at a time when the market was in a remarkably satisfactory 

 condition. Yet this crop was a complete and disastrous failure because 

 the unreliable labor conditions existing in that locality prevented the 

 proprietor from securing more than a quarter of his crop, the greater 

 part of it remaining on the ground to rot or to be devoured by birds, 

 etc. Thus it is that the management of the soil, as in every other 

 practical policy in this world, must be largely a give-and-take matter, 

 or a question of double-entry bookkeeping, so to speak, and manifold 

 considerations are involved. Where one gains in one way, he loses in 

 another, and it is sound judgment or business sense which will de- 

 termine what is the best thing to be done in any given case to get the 

 most out of the soil under the conditions surrounding it. 



Opportunities to get just sixch training as is necessary for the in- 

 telligent management of the soil are readily accessible in this country. 

 Agricultural colleges and other colleges not professedly so, but 

 giving courses in agriculture, both on the theoretical and on the 

 practical side, are numerous. The necessary expense of attending them 

 is certainly not great, and well within the means of a very large number 

 of the youth in the rural districts. But it is an astonishing fact that they 

 are not availed of, astonishing because to one of a philosophical or scien- 

 tific cast of mind, there are few, if any, fields more interesting, or better 

 adapted to the practical application of scientific methods than those 

 of agriculture, and especially of soil management. Yet in our so-called 

 schools of agriculture and mechanic arts it is indeed unusual when 

 the number of students, presumably farmers' sons, who graduate in 

 the mechanical arts as engineers, surveyors, etc., do not largely out- 

 number the students taking their degree in the strictly agricultural 

 courses. This is even more astonishing' when we reflect that there is 

 a demand, and a growing demand, in this country for skilled agricul- 

 turists to manage the estates either of rich individuals or of corpora- 

 tions, and the development of special crops for special industries. The 

 demand for men of this description is at the present time greater than 

 the supply, and such as have the proper training and qualifications can 

 conmiand salaries from $1,500 to $4,000 or $5,000 per year, possibly, in 

 exceptional cases, much more. A case could be cited, where a fine house 

 and grounds and $10,000 per year were offered to a certain expert to 

 take charge of a large plantation devoted mainly to the production of 

 a particular crop. These salaries are far above the average incomes 

 of young men in other branches of professional life. The life is in 

 other ways an attractive one; it requires more or less aptitude in 

 the qualifications of the student, for, as in every other branch of pro- 

 fessional life, the successful man is one that necessarily keeps up with 

 modern developments along his line ; but it must from the nature of the 



