20 SOILS 
treatment of the soils, the “ knowing how” to put them 
in condition is the secret of success in growing crops. 
The “whip and spur” method of farming, so long 
practiced in the United States, by which our soils have 
been subjected to the process of getting all you can out 
of them, without the return of anything to maintain or 
increase fertility, has so exhausted vast areas of our 
soils that they no longer produce paying crops. 
Any soil that will not produce paying crops may be 
justly termed a worn-out soil. These worn-out soils 
abound in all parts of our land. Even the rich corn belt 
is not immune from the curse of worn-out soils. 
As a rule a greedy husbandry or a sordid tillage has 
been the producer of worn-out soils, although the decep- 
tive theory of crop rotation has been to a degree a pro- 
ducer of them; for crop rotation alone will not maintain 
soil fertility. It is but a stimulant. 
Worn-out soils being so extensive, then, has not their 
restoration become the vital problem of the hour? 
It is appalling in going over the country to see so 
many farmers so treating their lands as to bring them 
each day nearer the doom that hangs over all mistreated 
lands, “ the abandoned farm.” 
Not one farmer in ten is giving his land a chance. 
Not one in ten seems to know how to build up his soil, 
or if he does, he seems to be going on the principle that 
he can get enough from his land to support him during 
his lifetime and does not care for his. posterity or future 
generations. 
He is like an ex-governor of a great state who spent 
his declining days on the farm which before he died was 
