THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART IX. 525 



wisely conserve their resources, and apply the most intelligent and skill- 

 ful methods of modern agriculture. It means that the methods of agricul- 

 ture chat have impoverished virgin soils and fertile valleys in other regions 

 will eventually and inevitably impoverish these if we are so short sighted 

 as to follow them. It means, if it means anything, a better system of farm- 

 ing, a higher type of agriculture and a better civilization. Civilization and 

 agriculture are inseparably connected. No civilization of a high standard 

 in any land has ever endured apart from a successful agriculture. Twenty' 

 five years ago the farmers of the older parts of Iowa awoke to a realization 

 of the fact that their lands would no longer produce wheat profitably under 

 existing conditions. It was then that they turned their attention to dairy- 

 ing and they have in the meantime not only placed Iowa in the foremost 

 rank of dairy states, and advanced our rank in all other agricultural 

 products but our farms will also produce more wheat and better wheat 

 per acre today than ever before in the history of the state. 



In selling $1,000 worth of wheat from an Iowa farm at present prices, 

 we sell with it about $350 worth of fertility. In selling $1,000 worth of 

 corn, we sell about $250 worth of fertility — or constituents which would cost 

 the farmer this amount if he were obliged to buy commercial fertilizers 

 to maintain the fertility of the farm. But we can convert $1,000 worth 

 of corn into beef, pork or mutton and sell it in that form and not remove 

 over $25 worth of fertility from the farm, or we can convert $1,000 worth 

 of feed into butter and not remove a single dollars worth of fertility with 

 it. Butter is almost wholly pure fat or carbon and it adds nothing to the 

 value or productive capacity of the soil. We probably shall never be 

 obliged to pay out much money for commercial fertilizers in Iowa if we 

 farm intelligently but we have already learned that we can not grow wheat 

 indefinitely, or constantly draw upon even a bountiful store of plant food 

 without diminished returns. The fact that this lesson has been learned 

 and is coming to be universally recognized is the main safeguard and the 

 strongest feature of Iowa agriculture. We not only produce an average 

 of a million dollars worth of agricultural products for every day of the 

 year, but we know enough to feed over one-fourth of a million dollars' 

 worth of produce on the farms every day. No other state in the Union 

 approaches this amount and there are only five other states that feed even 

 half as much. By this means Iowa not only leads in agricultural products 

 but conserves her resources. 



The manifest tendency of modern times is toward specialization and 

 concentration. The creamery system is the outgrowth of this movement. 

 It puts under the control of one man what was originally the work of forty 

 men and women. The conditions surrounding the work and the results 

 achieved are decidedly favorable to the one-man system. This process 

 is going still further and the creamery system of a few years hence will put 

 into one Dlant what was originally the work of not less than 500 different 

 individuals. It is already impossible for tne small creameries to maintain 

 a profitable existence. Ihe losses which attended butter making a few 

 years ago would be absolutely ruinous today and some of the losses now 

 existing will a few years hence put the creamery management which tol- 



