NINTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART Xll 715 
This sometimes happens before the soil has been brought to anywhere 
near its maximum producing capacity. Nature has placed metes and 
bounds to the operations of the soil robber. She says to him: "This 
far Shalt thou go and no farther." Then the soil robber says: "The land 
is run out; farming no longer pays here." So he sells his farm and wan- 
ders on to pastures new, leaving the land to others. Others who under- 
stand that the soil is not a fixed and generally decreasing source of 
income as are many of the other natural resources of the country. The 
wealth of the soil may not properly be compared with a fixed bank account 
upon which drafts in the form of crops are continuously drawn with the 
ultimate result of the complete exhaustion of the capital involved. The 
soil is more nearly compar.able with an invested fund whose annual interest 
is paid in the form of crops and, which under proper management, may 
be continually increased from its annual earnings. The forces of nature 
which have produced soils have not ceased to act, and through their 
steady, continued operations, they are capable of maintaining and renew- 
ing the producing power of this great natural resource when they are 
properly directed and assisted by the husbandman. 
One of the principal agencies in making the crude materials of the 
soil available for growing crops is the action of bacteria, the action of 
those minute organisms which produce the phenomena of decomposition 
and decay as well as those forms that combine the nitrogen of the air 
with the elements found in the soil and in the roots of growing plants. 
It is a well known fact that these organisms thrive best when the soil 
is in a good physical condition. 
Perhaps it would be well to discuss briefly what is meant by a good 
physical condition of the soil. Every farmer knows pretty well what a 
bad physical condition of the soil is: The humus of the soil may be ex- 
hausted by excessive cropping and neglecting to use the legumes or 
grasses in the rotation; then the soil loses its granulation or crumb struc- 
ture; when wet it becomes like putty, lacks the porous nature of productive 
soil, is heavy and dead. The clay appears on the hillsides and when heavy 
rains come, the water being unable to soak into the soil, runs off on the 
surface causing excessive washing away of the richest part of the soil, 
as well as the formation of ditches and gullies and the farmer is given 
an object lesson of the way that the "Father of Waters catches the hills 
in his arms and drags them down to the ocean." Dried out the soil Is 
baked and hard, difficult to cultivate, crops fail to do well, the tender 
rootlets can not find many pathways to penetrate among the insensible 
clods which the rude swain turns with his share and treads upon. If 
the oak should send his roots abroad he scarce could pierce that mold. 
The soil has become, as it were, a mass of dead matter. The water 
from below can not rise through the capillaries of the soil because the 
soil has not the capillaries. In times of drouth plants in such soil wither 
away like the seed that fell upon the rock because they have no root. A 
similar result may be obtained by allowing stock to tramp the soil 
during the early spring or by going upon the land with harrows and 
other implements when it is too wet. The result is that the farmer, like 
the Israelites of old, makes bricks without straw. 
