460 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



I want to say to you that we have an agricultural press — a dairy agri- 

 cultural press, Kimball's Dairy Farmer and Hoard's Dairyman, and you 

 dairymen owe it to yourselves and to Iowa to spread the gospel through 

 these papers. 



There is another side so much more important than the one I 

 have presented to you. It is the great moral question. I want to call 

 your attention to one thing. Have you ever ridden through a fertile 

 prairie that has been made desolate? I want to say it contains a lesson 

 that is different than the one I have talked about. It is a moral question. 

 Does the waste Iowa has had matter to our children and our children's 

 children? I want to call your attention to the British Agricultural As- 

 sociation. It sounded a warning. It asked the government of the United 

 States and of Canada to pass laws compelling the agriculturists of these 

 countries to put back into the spil all the vegetable nutrition they took 

 from it. I want to read you what P. Duncan Kennedy of Kansas, said 

 in his great lecture on ''A Master of Commerce." He said: 



"In order to drive home to the reader the validity of the statement 

 we are about to make, let us examine the pay roll of the years. The 

 Chili saltpetre beds yielded, in I860, 68,500 tons; in 1870, 182,000 tons; 

 in 1880, 225,000 tons; in 1890, 1,025,000 tons; in 1900, 1,453,000 tons; 

 and since 1900 every year has added 50,000 tons to the demand of the 

 year before. The amount yielded in 1900, 1,453,000 tons, was sold for 

 about $27,000,000, one-quarter of it passing into the thousands of nitrogen 

 compounds used in our civilization, and the other three-quarters into 

 food through its fertilizing action in agriculture. 



"European agriculture is thus wholly dependent upon a tiny little strip 

 of land in South America for its commercial fertilizers, and were the little 

 republic of Chili to close her gates of export, hunger would follow as in- 

 fallibly as the night the day. This is, of course, embarrassing, and highly 

 significant of the interpending conditions of our civilization; but when 

 we begin to estimate the amount of nitre taken out and the amount 

 still remaining in the beds, and compare this amount with the increas- 

 ing of the world's demand, we are more than philosophically interested — 

 we are practically frightened. We see that what has happened to guano 

 will inevitably happen to saltpetre. It is a matter of plain, hard, cold- 

 drawn fact, that these saltpetre beds will not last longer than 20 years, 

 if present conditions continue." 



"If present conditions continue." There is the saving clause. They 

 need not continue. The true foundation of conservation is in that pavil- 

 ion — the dairy cow. Let me tell you. Along that road the farmer hauls 

 a load of corn — 50 bushels, and he will sell it for $25, and that $25 worth 

 of corn contains more vegetable nutrition than a car load of butter weigh- 

 ing 20,000 pounds that will sell for $6,000. My friends, it is a fact that 

 50 bushels of corn takes more vegetable nutrition from the soil than a 

 car load of butter weighing 20,000 pounds and selling for $6,000. There 

 is the answer to Prof. Duncan Kennedy; there is the answer to the 

 British Scientific Society. These facts are so impressive to me that 

 when I look at a field of wheat, corn or rye, I always wonder how much 



