30 AGRICUWURE: of MAINE. 



plex civilization but in a true sense he originates nothing. The 

 farmer takes of the forces of nature — moisture, air, Hght, heat 

 and even cold and darkness combine themselves with soil — and 

 creates a crop, and in so doing he can leave the creative power 

 of the soil intact, provided he handles his land intelligently. 

 This brings out another feature, viz. the importance of so hand- 

 ling our soil as to get all that is necessary for our wants and yet 

 not impair its ability to grow crops. 



If, as has been outlined, the soil is the only source from which 

 all life in time to come must be maintained, then no man has a 

 moral right to so handle his soil that it will be harder, if not 

 impossible, for succeeding generations to live. The national 

 life, not to mention its prosperity, is dependent on the fertility 

 of the soil, A farmer of three score years and ten tells me that 

 this is his farm; he has redeemed it from the wilderness and 

 has made it to blossom as the rose. He has paid for it, and it 

 is his. No man has a right to dictate to him how he shall handle 

 it. He can reduce its fertility if he so desires, as it is his. Not 

 so fast. Of that farm he has only a life lease for long after 

 he has passed away that land which he has so fondly called his 

 own will still have to provide food to sustain the life of those 

 then living, so morally speaking no man has a right, by a care- 

 less, not to say vicious system of farming, to imperil the very 

 life of succeeding generations. 



The American farmer, perhaps more than any other, has for- 

 gotten this. From the time when the Puritans first landed at 

 Plymouth, from the time the cavaliers first occupied old Vir- 

 ginia up to the present time American farming has been a 

 system of wholesale soil robbery. The center of American 

 farming operations has been gradually moving westward leaving 

 behind a trail of impoverished soil, impoverished to such an 

 extent that in many instances it has been abandoned as utterly 

 worthless and thrown out of cultivation to regain fertility by 

 the slow process of nature. This is true not alone in one locality 

 but in many. The writer has seen the mark of the plow in the 

 young forests of New Brunswick, has seen the abandoned farms 

 in New England, and in the cotton states dense forests are 

 growing where before the war cotton was grown, until it will 



