to be destroyed by the wearing. The fact is that soils 

 cither increase or maintain their productivity indefi- 

 nitely under proper cultivation. If the earth, the great 

 mother of human and animal life, is to "wear out," 

 what is to become of the race ? 



The two remedies are as well ascertained as is the 

 evil. Rotation of crops and the use of fertilizers act as 

 tonics upon the soil. We might expand our resources 

 and add billions of dollars to our national wealth by 

 conserving soil resources, instead of exhausting them, 

 as we have the forests and the contents of the mines, 

 for there is good authority for the assertion that the 

 farmer could take from the same area of ground in four 

 years' grain crops out of a total of seven years as much 

 as the whole seven now give him, leaving the products 

 of the other three years when the land rested from 

 grain as a clear profit due to better methods. 



He can do far more than that by joining stock rais- 

 ing with grain raising. Nature has provided the cattle 

 to go with the land. There is as much money in live 

 stock as there is in grain. Looked at in any way, there 

 is money in live stock ; money for dairy products, money 

 for beef, money for the annual increase, and most 

 money of all for the next year's crop when every par- 

 ticle of manure is saved and applied to the land. 



We need not consider at present really intensive 

 farming, such as is done by market gardeners with high 

 profit, or such culture as in France, in Holland, in Bel- 

 gium and in the island of Jersey produces financial re- 

 turns per acre that seem almost beyond belief. What 



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