38 ORGANIC MATTER 
“ Agricultural Bankruptcy” and “ Abandoned Farms,” 
and as I beheld this pictured doom of the American 
farm, I exclaimed: When, oh when, will the American 
farmer come into a realization of this awful destruc- 
tion of soil wealth? 
One day in the spring of 1909, while directing some 
work on my farm, I noticed to the north great clouds 
of smoke and flame covering a large area. I wondered 
what could be burning. The conflagration was too 
large for burning corn stalks or buildings. Later in 
the day I learned that a farmer (?) had touched a 
match to a forty-acre field of dry Big English clover 
grown on the ground the previous season and left uncut. 
When I learned of this conscienceless destruction of 
soil fertility, I said in my wrath: The match in the 
hands of the American farmer is a menace to the farm. 
In the growing of this clover and leaving it uncut to 
cover the ground through the leaching season of fall, 
winter and spring, this farmer had taken the first and 
an important lesson in soil restoration. But his second 
and best lesson was left unlearned. 
Think what it would have meant to that soil and that 
farmer had that splendid crop of organic matter, so 
full of the precious soil elements, nitrogen and humus, 
been turned under by the plow. 
Think how the little rootlets of the corn would have 
reveled in this mass of organic matter, mixed with the 
soil and drawing from it into the corn system those 
elements that make that sturdiness of growth that pro- 
duces a heavy paying crop on the farm. 
Again, think of the financial loss to that farmer from 
