SOIL EROSIOX — HALL 307 



its action. But what the pioneer opening up a new country practices 

 is rarely agriculture; he breaks up the virgin surface, and not uncom- 

 monly expects to move on in a few years and make his profit out of 

 enhanced land values. It is imperative for him to grow nothing but im- 

 mediate cash crops, and the process on much of this western land was 

 of the crudest. Often the farmers, once their crops had been lodged 

 in the elevators, turned the key in the door and went off to California 

 until seedtime came round in the spring. There was no livestock on 

 the farm, no garden round the gaunt frame house, the farmer seemed 

 to have little thought of making a home, but only of cashing in some 

 crops and then moving on. The pioneer works with a feeling of infinity 

 at the back of his mind; there is always more land somewhere. As 

 one of them is reported to have said to a United States Soil Conserva- 

 tion officer: "I have run through two farms, and I'm getting out of 

 this. You can't teach me nothing about farming." Without doubt 

 much of the poorest of this land ought never to have been plowed, even 

 in boom times; once the crust has been broken it becomes a sort of 

 running sore, always eating into the land on its margin. As a ranch 

 under its natural vegetation it had a modest productive value, and 

 to that use it must return. But the process of natural regeneration 

 will take time, a generation perhaps before vegetation will creep over 

 the barren subsoil to fix the sand and build up some reserve of humus. 

 Its productive capacity is too low to pay for fertilizers, but a few 

 plants can be introduced which will colonize the waste and begin to 

 restore fertility. In the better land which can be made to retain its 

 productivity under crop, a conservative system of farming must be 

 introduced in which the cereals will alternate with a cover crop, partly 

 leguminous, which when grazed will both add humus to stabilize the 

 soil and collect nitrogen from the atmosphere. We know that many 

 European soils have been cultivated for 1,000 years or more without 

 showing any decreased production, by making use of the power of 

 certain bacteria to fix nitrogen. In China, too, that mother of all 

 the arts of life, intensive cultivation has been maintained for 2,000, 

 3,000, perhaps even 4,000 years without soil erosion or loss of fertility. 

 Of recent years improved methods of cultivation have been intro- 

 duced to minimize the danger of soil drifting. Since it is inevitable 

 that at certain seasons of the year, indeed in dry farming areas through- 

 out a whole year, the soil should be cultivated while bare of a crop, 

 the practice has been introduced of dividing the land into strips, the 

 bare land alternating with land under crop in place of the former large 

 areas under the same treatment. Thus the incipient soil erosion under 

 the wind is checked before it can proceed far, and a very efficient 

 measure of protection is attained. 



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