Epic of tbe Cornfield 1 1 7 



wheat and rice and sugar by a hundred thousand. 

 Man must help the earth before the earth will do all 

 she can to help him. But when man and this earth 

 form a partnership there is no limit to the richness of 

 the product. There need be no fear that man will 

 outgrow the food-producing capacity of the world, 

 and so starve to death at last. A witless creature 

 might overpopulate the earth ; but man's brain will 

 always outrun his stomach, and his wit will provide 

 for his appetite. 



But this thought only adds to our sense of man's 

 absolute dependence upon the soil. He is as much 

 rooted to the earth in his physical life as a plant or a 

 tree. For he must have his food ; and his food grows 

 on the soil and out of the soil. The human race 

 walks erect indeed, but it still goes on its stomach, 

 nevertheless. Cut off man's dinner and you stop his 

 work, his wages, his health, and his pleasures. For 

 only think, that with all his growth and his advance- 

 ment, his gain in endurance, skill, wisdom, and self- 

 discipline, it is still needful for him, three times or so 

 in every day, to quit his work, drop all his tasks, turn 

 from his sorrows and his joys, to feed his body and 

 satisfy his hunger. A man may isolate himself in the 

 highest pursuits and sometimes forget that he walks 

 the earth at all. But by and by his hunger will re- 

 mind him that he is of the earth, earthy. Hunger is 

 a monarch that rules the world. 



In every year that passes over the great nations 

 of the world there is always one period when, but for 



