Enemies in the Field 337 



farmers. Over-cropping, which exhausted New England's fields 

 within a century and a half, was practiced by many farmers in 

 the corn belt up to the time the A.A.A. went into action. 

 There were men who simply refused to believe that the soil 

 which had grown corn twenty feet high for their fathers could 

 ever be spent. Nor could they understand that even top- 

 dressing the soil with manure would not give it all the chemi- 

 cal values it needed for complete fertility. Manure, they 

 argued, made rich soil. Rich soil would grow rich crops. If the 

 harvest failed, it could not be the fault of the soil. Rather, 

 God or the government was to blame. 



A lot of hard times on the farm have been laid to the Re- 

 publicans or the Democrats, or to sin, which were really 

 directly attributable to farmers raising the same crop on the 

 same acreage year after year. In the agricultural colleges they 

 taught the values of crop rotation and green manuring. The 

 County Agents lectured on soil analysis and the chemical 

 properties necessary to vegetable growth. The younger men 

 listened and paid heed to these things. A few of them had 

 been to the state agricultural schools and were aware that 

 science had a place in agriculture. But the older generation of 

 dirt farmers spat their disgust for book-farming. 



"Bought wit's better'n taught wit. . . . You can't teach 

 your grandmother to suck eggs. . . . What these young fellers 

 need to find out is that farming ain't done outa books. It's 

 done with sweat. Fact is, some years are good, and some are 

 bad. There's always been chinch bugs and hoppergrasses, and 

 there always will be. A man has got to take 'em, and make the 

 best of 'em. That's bein' a man. Just let these college farmers 

 take a-holt of plow handles instead of a book and see what 

 that'll larn 'em. . . ." 



There was no use telling these die-hards that Chinese farm- 

 ers have kept their soil at the same state of productivity for 

 four thousand years. "Shucks! As if there was anything a 

 Chinee could teach an American!" 



There is a terrible bravery about the battle ignorance puts 



