1908 



THE GOVERNORS' CONFERENCE 



331 



ing to speak but a very few minutes — the 

 people in the grass belt of the Mississippi 

 Valley have ceased to grow crops to so 

 great an extent as they do in some other 

 parts of the country. They grow grass, be- 

 cause they are compelled to. The factory, 

 the railroad, the mine, have taken away the 

 farm help, and farmers are not able to com- 

 pete with those other institutions in hiring 

 men. So far as the poor land is concerned, 

 the land is being abandoned and is going 

 back to nature; and nature is good to it, if 

 you give her time. But this results, too, in 

 rich land being put in grass. 



"Anybody in studying wheat and looking 

 into the production of one of those states 

 that at one time grew fifty million bushels 

 will discover that now they grow scarcely 

 any. Why? It does not pay them. Put 

 wheat up to a dollar a bushel and the state 

 of Iowa will grow fifty million of bushels a 

 year. They will plow up the pastures and 

 grow wheat. 



"The people of the Southern states were 

 not able to engage in cattle raising, because 

 nature had planted there an obnoxious tick, 

 and the business was not profitable; but the 

 United States Government has set about 

 destroying that tick, and the effort will suc- 

 ceed. Those people will get cattle ; the 

 people will grow grasses ; the grasses will 

 fill the soil; erosion will cease, and when 

 they want a great cotton crop they will plow 

 up the soil, as the man in Iowa plows up 

 the pasture to get a corn or a wheat crop. 

 (Applause.) 



"Go further west, into what was known 

 as the Great American Desert, and which 

 is to all intents and purposes the American 

 desert now, west of the one hundredth 

 meridian. The Department of Agriculture 

 hunted the world over for plants that grew 

 in dry regions, and along the deserts in Asia 

 and Africa they found such plants. They 

 found a hard wheat ; and we had quite an 

 interesting time in getting it introduced, be- 

 cause the miller did not want to grind hard 

 wheat ; it took more power. But we heard 

 of fifty million bushels of it last year. (Ap- 

 plause.) It is the richest wheat that grows; 

 there is more nutriment in it than in any 

 other wheat, and to-day it is growing all 

 the way from the Dakotas to the Pacific 

 Ocean. 



"But you cannot grow crops forever with- 

 out legumes. The people out West have a 

 rich land ; the disintegrated rock has not 

 been carried away, as in the Southern states, 

 by floods of water, because they do not have 

 floods of water. (Laughter.) When the 

 irrigation problem, under my friend Newell 

 here, lets water on that land it will grow 

 anything, because it is exceedingly rich. 



"When you speak of the destruction of a 

 soil it means that you have taken away that 

 part of the plant's food that comes from 

 the atmosphere; and good farming means 

 the keeping of a supply of organic matter 

 in the soil. 



"It is well to apply fertilizer if your sys- 

 tem of farming is such that you cannot get 

 a pasture. But the people in the Mississippi 

 Valley never have used fertilizers, and, let 

 me tell you, they never will, because there 

 is not enough fertilizer to be had in the 

 market to supply the American farmer. We 

 have got to farm without it ; that is what 

 we have got to do. And the people in the 

 dry regions of the West are some day 

 going to supply the cities of the East with 

 wheat from that same dry region. (Ap- 

 plause.) 



"We sent men two years ago way up into 

 Northern Siberia to find wheat and legumes 

 for North Dakota. We knew it must be 

 there, because man could not live widior.t 

 legumes ; and when we went there we found 

 a clover that lived in the winter, with the 

 thermometer six degrees below freezing; 

 and we found a new alfalfa. We are going 

 to bring this winter wheat and this clover 

 and alfalfa here this summer and take them 

 out to the people west of the one hundredth 

 meridian, and then these people will be 

 ready to farm." (Great applause.) 



When Secretary Wilson had closed 

 his remarks, Governor Johnson started 

 a hearty laugh among the politicians 

 present by a humorous application of 

 one of the points made by the Secre- 

 tary. He said: "I think the Secre- 

 tary has struck a very happy note in 

 one thing. He has advised a remedy. 

 He says that we must have something 

 from the atmosphere for the enrich- 

 ment of the soil. I know there are a 

 number of men here who are in poli- 

 tics, and it seems to me that this will 

 give a number of our politicians a 

 steady occupation. If hot air is just 

 as good as cold, we know now what 

 the politicians of the future have got 

 to do." 



Mr. Jas. S. Whipple, State Forest, 

 Fish and Game Commissioner of New 

 York, one of the advisers chosen by 

 Governor Hughes of New York, made 

 a short talk on forestry conditions as 

 they exist in the Empire State, and 

 told what that state is doing along the 

 line of forest conservation. Mr. 

 Whipple said : 



"We have in the state of New York 41,- 

 000,000,000 feet of lumber, board measure, 

 standing, including farm lots and all. The 

 state owns 1,500,000 acres of woodlands, 

 which, under the Constitution, cannot be 

 touched ; and therefore that must be de- 

 ducted from the whole amount. We cut 



