324 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



June 



20.8 bushels per acre for the first five 

 and I I.I bushels for the second of these 

 years, an average of sixteen bushels. The 

 difference in average of these two plots 

 was 32.2 bushels, or twice the total yield 

 of the ground exhausted by the single 

 crop system. The corn grown at the end 

 of the ten years was hardly hip high, 

 the ears small and the grains light. But 

 the cost of cultivation remained the 

 same. And the same is true of every 

 other grain or growth when raised con- 

 tinuously on land unfertilized. We fre- 

 quently hear it said that the reduction 

 in yield is due to the wearing out of 

 the soil as if it was a garment to be de- 

 stroyed by the wearing. The fact is 

 that soils either increase or inaintain 

 their productivity indefinitely under pro- 

 per cultivation. If the earth is to "wear 

 out," what is to become of the race? 



The two remedies are as well ascer- 

 tained as is the evil. Rotation of crops 

 and the use of fertilizers act as tonics 

 upon the soil. We might expand our 

 resources and add billions of dollars 

 to our national wealth by conserving 

 soil resources, instead of exhausting 

 them as we have the forests and the 

 contents of the mines. For there is 

 good authority for the assertion that 

 the farmer could take from the same 

 area of ground in four years' grain 

 crops out of a total of seven years as 

 much as the whole seven now give him; 

 leaving the products of the other three 

 years vv-hen the land rested from grain 

 as clear profit due to better methods. 



He can do far more than that by 

 joining stock raising with grain rais- 

 ing. Nature has provided the cattle to 

 go with the land. There is as much 

 money in live stock as there is in grain. 

 Looked at in any way there is money 

 in live stock; money for dairy products, 

 money for beef, money for the annual 

 increase, and most money of all for the 

 next year's crop when every particle of 

 manure is saved and applied to the land. 



We need not consider at present real- 

 ly intensive farming, such as is done by 

 market gardeners with high profit, or 

 such culture as in France, in Holland, 

 in Belgium and in the island of Jersey 

 produces financial returns per acre that 

 seem almost beyond belief. What our 

 people have to do is to cover less 

 ground, cultivate smaller farms so as 

 to make the most of them, instead of get- 

 ting a scant and uncertain yield from 

 several hundred acres, and raise pro- 

 ductivity, by intelligent treatment, to 

 twice or three times its present level. 



There is more money in this sytem. 

 The net profit from an acre of wheat 

 on run-down soils is very small; con- 

 sequently decreasing the acreage of 

 wheat under certain conditions will not 

 materially decrease profits. Here are 



some reliable estimates. The price of 

 wheat is given from the United States 

 Department of Agriculture Yearbook. 



•7; O I- 



Yield. Price. ^ oJ ^^^ % 



^^ °^ a" 



^^ cj.S ^S 



20 $0,638 $12.76 ^ ,-.89 + $4.87 



16 638 10.21 7.89 + 2.32 



12 638 7.66 7.89 — .23 



10 638 6.38 7.89 — 1.51 



8 638 5.10 7.89 — 2.79 



I have dwelt upon the conservation 

 of farm resources because of the com- 

 manding importance of this industry 

 and because of its relation to our future. 

 Nearly thirty-six per cent of our people 

 are engaged directly in agriculture. But 

 all the rest depend upon it. In the last 

 analysis, commerce, manufactures, our 

 home market, every form of activity 

 runs back to the bounty of the earth 

 by which every worker, skilled and un- 

 skilled, must be fed and by which his 

 wages are ultimately paid. The farm 

 products of the United States in 1906 

 wore valued at $6,794,000,000 and in 1907 

 at $7,412,000,000. All of our vast do- 

 mestic commerce, equal in value to the 

 the foreign trade of all the nations com- 

 bined, is supported and paid for by the 

 land. Of our farm area only one-half 

 is improved. It does not produce one- 

 half of what it could be made to yield; 

 not by some complex system of inten- 

 sive culture, but merely by ordinary 

 care and industry intelligently applied. 

 It is the capital upon which alone we can 

 draw through all the future, but the 

 amount of the draft that will be hon- 

 ored depends upon the care and intel- 

 ligence given to its cultivation. Were 

 any statesman to show us how to add 

 $7,000,000,000 annually to our foreign 

 trade, it would be the sensation of the 

 hour. The way to do this in agricul- 

 ture is open. Our share in the increase 

 would not be the percentage of profit 

 allowed by successful trading, but the 

 entire capital sum. On the other side 

 stands the fact that the unappropriated 

 area suited to farm purposes is almost 

 gone, and that we have been for the 

 last century reducing the producing 

 power of the country. Nowhere in the 

 range of national purposes is the reward 

 for conservation of a national resource 

 so ample. 



By the fixed rate of increase in the 

 past, we must count upon a population 



