358 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



or place Mm in a better position to overcome the evils of the in- 

 tense competition to which he is subjected, to urge upon him the 

 dangers of soil-exhaustion from the loss of the elements of fer- 

 tility in the products sold from the farm. Profitable farming can 

 only be practiced when the surplus products of the farm can be 

 disposed of at remunerative rates in the markets of the world ; 

 and these products must of course contain chemical constituents 

 that might, under proper conditions, be looked upon as elements 

 of fertility. But of what use are elements of fertility if they can 

 not be converted into products that can be sold and made to con- 

 tribute to the legitimate income that is the object of the farmer's 

 labors ? It is a false assumption in economic science that the sale 

 of a product is to be deprecated as a positive loss to the means of 

 production ; but farmers are not alarmed by such sensational 

 claims, as the fallacies of the proposition are readily detected. 



American farmers will continue to sell grain and animal prod- 

 ucts of various forms as long as there is a demand for them out- 

 side of their farms, and this is of course the only available re- 

 source of profitable production ; but they need not fear the evils 

 of soil-exhaustion from this source, notwithstanding the warnings 

 of alarmists who overlook the complex compensating agencies of 

 Nature, and fail to recognize the real sources of diminished pro- 

 duction. The history of agriculture and our knowledge of science 

 agree in teaching that the causes of diminished productiveness 

 that are often noticed and referred to as indications of soil-ex- 

 haustion, can not be exclusively attributed to the loss of constit- 

 uents removed from the soil in the crops sold from the farm, but 

 rather to the failure to conserve the available elements of fertility, 

 and keep them in active circulation, by a judicious system of crop- 

 ping and soil management. 



If the fertilizing constituents of the barn-yard manure which 

 are now wasted were utilized by being converted into farm prod- 

 ucts of marketable value, the gross agricultural exports of the 

 United States might be more than doubled without making our 

 soils appreciably poorer in any of their essential constituents. 



It must be admitted, if the figures already given are approxi- 

 mately correct — and there is good reason to believe that they un- 

 derstate rather than exaggerate the real facts of the case — that 

 the disposition made of the residues of the farm is of far greater 

 importance in the farming of the future than the aggregate of 

 soil constituents contained in the products exported. 



Under the present conditions of production the problem for 

 the farmer to solve is. How can the sale of farm products be 

 increased without diminishing the productive resources of the 

 farm ? For many obvious reasons the purchase of commercial 

 fertilizers can not be admitted as the constant factor required in 



