330 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



June 



and limits surface wash. On the steeper 

 slopes, special devices may be used to sup- 

 plement contour cultivation, such as strips 

 of grass-land, shrub-land, or trees, alter- 

 nating with zones of plow-land. Reservoirs 

 at the heads of ravines and at suitable 

 heights in the ravines where surface wash 

 is concentrated, may be used to arrest 

 storm-floods, and if these are connected 

 with lines of tile-drain following contours 

 on either hand, the concentrated waters will 

 be redistributed and at the same time trans- 

 ferred from the surface to the subsoil. 



These and similar devices serve to limit 

 the wash of the slopes, but the more radical 

 and permanent remedies will, I think, be 

 found in the development of values in trees, 

 shrubs, vines, and grasses to such an extent 

 that they may be employed almost exclu- 

 sively in clothing the steeper slopes where 

 wash is most menacing, and where the usual 

 modes of culture that give rise to bare sur- 

 faces during portions of the year can 

 scarcely fail to involve a degree of wash 

 which cannot be replaced by soil growth 

 below. Is not the time at hand when trees, 

 shrubs, vines, grasses, and combinations of 

 these, may be so developed and extended in 

 value and availability by modern selective 

 processes that they shall become sufficiently 

 profitable crops to monopolize all the areas 

 where wash threatens the ultimate removal 

 of the whole soil? By such extension of 

 these crops may not the bare-surface culture 

 be so limited to relatively level lands as to 

 cause in these, when intelligently handled, 

 only that degree of surface loss which they 

 can stand without menace to the perpetuity 

 of the soil? 



But a critical question remains to be 

 answered : Can such modes of soil-man- 

 agement and crop-selection be made to give 

 reasonable profits? Before we can hope 

 that the millions who till the soil will join 

 effectively in a radical scheme of soil-con- 

 servation, it must be made to appear that it 

 will give some reasonable returns at every 

 large stage of its progress ; must pay, let us 

 say, in the long run of a lifetime. We may 

 fairly assume that intelligent people will be 

 guided by the total returns of a lifetime, in 

 lieu of beguilement by the ultra-quick re- 

 turns of forced and wasteful cropping in 

 total neglect of later results. It may be 

 assumed that he who tills a farm from his 

 twentieth to his sixtieth year will find more 

 satisfaction in the summed profits of forty 

 crops of increasing value enhanced by the 

 higher value of his land at the end, even 

 though the margin above cost be no greater, 

 than in the sum of forty crops of decreas- 

 ing values with a debased value of the land 

 at the end. Our practical problem is there- 

 fore so to improve processes, so to increase 

 intelligent management, and so to exalt the 

 point of view, that every step in the pro- 

 cesses proposed shall give satisfactory re- 

 turns for the labor involved. How far this 

 is practicable just now, I must leave to 



those whose technical knowledge in the 

 practical art of tilling fits them to answer ; 

 but in any event, it seems that this must 

 become so in time; for if the loss of soils- 

 proceeds at the present rate and the num- 

 ber of inhabitants continues to increase as 

 now, the value of the residue of tillable land 

 which will remain after a few centuries will 

 so appreciate as to force extreme measures 

 for its conservation. The pitiable struggles 

 of certain Oriental peoples to retain and 

 cultivate the scant remnant of once ample 

 soils is at once an example and a warning. 

 Our escape from this dire struggle should 

 spring from a clearer forevision, a deeper 

 insight, greater technical skill, and inde- 

 fatigable industry. 



Before the discussion of these pa- 

 pers was opened, Hon. James Wilson,, 

 Secretary of Agriculture, was called 

 upon by the Conference and responded 

 with a brief address that was crowded 

 in every crisp sentence with hard,, 

 common sense. 



Secretary Wilson opened his re- 

 marks by saying that he did not think 

 it wise for him to say anything to the 

 Conference. "I have been filling up 

 since you came here." he said, "and 

 really you should do the talking and 

 give us instruction. I am one of the 

 servants of the American people, and 

 I am anxious to know what is best to 

 be done for the general good." 



Continuing, Secretary Wilson said: 



"The paper read by Mr. Hill tliis morning- 

 made a very deep impression upon me. The 

 greatest asset we have in the United States 

 is our soil ; we are destroying that as rap- 

 idly as we can, and the oldest settled part of 

 the United States has made the most prog- 

 ress in the destruction of our soil (laugh- 

 ter), of which we have a great variety. 

 Down on the Gulf coast the land has been 

 peopled longer than the upper part of the 

 Mississippi Valley. The heavy rainfalls, and 

 the perpetual cultivation and growing of 

 crops have helped erosion, and the soil has 

 been destroyed in that way. It is going oflf 

 very, very rapidly. The cure is a system of 

 agriculture that will keep the soil filled 

 with plant food, organic matter, humus. 

 That is the cure ; that is the way to keep up 

 the soil. Somebody once asked an English 

 gardener how he got such a fine lawn. He 

 had a beautiful grass lawn which attracted 

 attention. He said, 'We weeded, and we 

 weeded ; we manured and we manured, for 

 eight hundred years ; and that is the way 

 they got it. (Laughter.) 



"Now, jumping from one part of the 

 United States to another — because I am go- 



