INSTITUTE PAPERS. IO5 



and America have shown that soil decomposition is very much 

 accelerated by tillage, so that tillage is really nianuring in that 

 it increases the amount of available plant food. 



Fifth, we feed the soil through purchased'protein foods fed 

 to our cows. A ton of cottonseed meal for this purpose is 

 worth something like four or five times as much as a ton of 

 corn meal. These protein foods vary in their fertilizing value. 



And, lastly, we depend upon chemical fertilizers. These are 

 plant foods, and when bought and used right, profitable foods. 

 The speaker uses one hundred tons of them on a farm fifteen 

 miles from his market and four and a half miles from the rail- 

 road, and can say with authority that not only chemicals but 

 intensive farming is profitable, and, so far as I can perceive, 

 is the only method by means of which we can acquire an income 

 essential to the necessities of our times. 



In conclusion, I wish to express the belief which I feel that 

 the coming conditions, industrial, social and intellectual, are 

 all making for a new and higher life on the farm, and one that 

 shall not suffer, but otherwise, in contrast with the opportuni- 

 ties and lives of other industrialists, and the man on the farm 

 in his intelligence, his ambition, his purpose, will be the deter- 

 mining factor that is to measure the type of life and culture 

 that he is to live. It may be an enviable one or otherwise as 

 he wills it. 



