58 



THE ALUMNI JOURNAL. 



form in many cases a network or skeleton 

 upon which the vegetable principles are 

 built up into an organic structure, just 

 as our own skeleton forms a structure 

 upon which our organic tissues are sus- 

 tained. Now, this is so important a mat- 

 ter that the best men of our times have 

 given it most serious attention, and every 

 once in a while they put their thoughts 

 into language and it is sometimes truly 

 startling. 



In the United States there is still so much 

 rich land left to us that there is no im- 

 mediate cause tor fear, but in Europe this 

 matter has assumed a more serious aspect 

 and it is only a question of time in the 

 United States when we shall have to face 

 this quesition of improvidence, — for these 

 < failures to supply the land with the ma- 

 terials we take from it in order to sustain 

 plant life is nothing more or less than 

 improvidence. 



The density of population in England 

 is such that the land there is incapable of 

 supporting the people who reside upon it, 

 and few of us stop to consider that it costs 

 $700,000,000 per year to provide England 

 with food which she cannot raise herself. 

 Now, if this is true to-day, it takes but a 

 very simple calculation to show that fifty 

 years from this time, England will have 

 to pay $2,000,000,000 for food for her 

 population that she cannot raise herself. 

 And it is only a fair presumption, that at 

 the present rate of increase of population 

 in the United States and with our present 

 reckless waste of material, we shall be in 

 a similar position to the England of to- 

 day. 



We have several ways of overcoming 

 this difficulty, but the most rational is to 

 follow scientific training and appliances, 

 that we may be maintained in happiness 

 and comfort. To put it in the words of 

 an English scientist we have in fact to 

 make our choice between science and 

 suffering, and it is only by utilizing the 



gifts of science that we have any hope of 

 maintaining our population in plenty and 

 comfort. Science will do this for us if 

 we will only let her. She may be no 

 fairy-godmother, but she will readily en- 

 dow 7 those who love and trust her. Since it 

 cannot but be, that innumerable and most 

 important uses remain to be discovered 

 among the materials and objects known 

 to us, as well as those which the progress 

 of science must hereafter disclose. We 

 may conceive the well-grounded expec- 

 tation not only of happiness in the phy- 

 sical resources of mankind and the con- 

 sequent improvement of their condition, 

 but of a continual power of penetrating 

 into the arcana of nature and becoming 

 still further acquainted with her secrets. 



To give you an idea I have a few fig- 

 ures here of the development of waste in 

 the United States. The total acreage of 

 the United States is 200,000.000 acres 

 under cultivation that gives 225,000,000 

 tons of crops. The mineral matter of 

 these crops is about 9,200,000 tons and 

 the phosphoric acid which is the most 

 important proportion of the mineral mat- 

 ter amounts to 1,840,000 tons, or about 

 19 lbs. per acre. Now, this is abso- 

 lutely taken away from the soil and 

 while part of this material is replaced in 

 the straw and refuse that goes back to 

 the land (and it is thus estimated that 

 about 840,000 tons are thus replaced), 

 yet another amount is replaced by fertil- 

 izers about 300,000 tons. We therefore 

 return to the soil only about one-quarter 

 of that which we have taken from it. This 

 condition must stop somewhere or the soil 

 will not continue to bear for us. 



The application of Chemistry to the 

 Utilization of Raw Materials is one of the 

 most interesting phases of the science, 

 and there is none that is more important 

 to the people than is found in the case of 

 agriculture. Now, it is only about thir- 

 ty years ago that this subject was taken 



