430 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



while Pennsylvania reports eighty-eight. There are good reasons for 

 the dillerence, in cliiuatie and soil conditions, with the small area de- 

 voted to these crops. 



The question suggests itself: If the average for the entire country 

 were up to the highest standard, with thirty bushels of wheat, fifty 

 bushels of corn and two hundred bushels of potatoes, what would the 

 producers receive under sudi conditions? 



In the less productive soils and sections, the Upper Silurian, De- 

 vonian, Carboniferous and other systems, where the cultivated ground 

 consists of shale, stones, all clay or sand resting on the upturned 

 edges of the bed rock, at uneven depths below the scanty soil, the 

 yield is reduced at a low average, it makes a material difference 

 whether a soil is a hundred feet in depth or whether one or two 

 feet. 



A first class soil, if run over a screen of a fourth inch mesh, would 

 practically all pass through, while that from shale and sand stone 

 consists of material too coarse for plants to obtain the elements of 

 plant food contained, affording a much smaller surface to the feed- 

 ing of roots, besides the moisture holding power of the finer soil. 



Loam, a term frequently used to denote a good soil, chiefly com- 

 posed of silicious sand, clay and carbonate of lime, with more or less 

 of oxide of iron, magnesia, various salts and decayed vegetable and 

 animal matter. Sand and clay are principal elements forming soil 

 that is friable, easy to work, retentive of moisture and fertility. 



Sandstone forms a sand soil ; the various shales form clay of vari- 

 ous colors ; red, yellow, black and intermediate colors ; often a very 

 fine clay, hard to work, and frequently if not generally improved by 

 drainage. 



There are thousands of acres of such land in this and other At- 

 lantic Coast states, that mi^ht be redeemed and made fertile, if the 

 same government aid was afforded agriculture, that is given to irriga- 

 tion and draining swamp lands in the Southern and Western States. 

 While in the Eastern states, agriculture is taxed and tariffed to 

 supply funds to redeem a great area of unproductive land and bring 

 it under cultivation, they are asked to create competition with them- 

 selves and supply the money to do it. A little digression from the 

 strict adherence to the text may be permissible, because all that is 

 mentioned bears upon the subject under consideration. 



There is much concern about the future in agriculture in this 

 country and the abandoned farms in many sections, yet the industry 

 seems prosperous in production and no abandoned farms found in 

 sections where the soil is naturally fertile. The rocky cliffs, beechy 

 shale hills and tenacious clays cannot be made to maintain a suc- 

 cessful agriculture, except at a cost far above the value of ordinary 

 crops and the owners of such lands are not financially able to spe- 

 cialize. After eking out a precarious existence under adverse con- 

 ditions, without capital to change to poultry, fruit, dairying, fish, 

 frog or skunk farming, the land must simply be abandoned to avoid 

 distress or starvation in many instances. The encouragement for 

 farmers to produce larger crops does not appear very flattering, 

 when the results are analyzed, when large crops such as were pro- 

 duced last year are worth less than the medium crops of other years. 



Having no control over the prices at which general farm crops 

 must be sold in competition with all the world, and the different sec- 

 tions of this country, there is little or no profit except perhaps, 



