280 CAMPBELL'S SOIL CULTURE MANUAL 



chine to sew mechanically was denounced as having sought 

 to take from the seamstresses their means of earning a 

 living. Wise railroad owners laughed at the young man 

 who first proposed a plan for stopping railroad trains with 

 air. Men who have taken the advance step in discovery 

 or invention, in all science and knowledge, have won their 

 way over ignorance and prejudice. Sometimes it has been 

 necessary to overcome the inertia of error as it lies en- 

 trenched behind years of wrong teaching. Of course the 

 truth prevails in the end; but to very many of those to 

 whom it has been given to be leaders in special lines it has 

 seemed like long waiting for the victory. 



If there is progress in industry generally there is also 

 progress in all forms of industry that relate to farming. 

 And if this progress in most things is accomplished spite 

 of prejudice it holds true as to agriculture. Scientific cul- 

 ture of the soil is a step forward; but it has had to make 

 its opposition. It has proved its worth on the great prai- 

 ries of the west that have been given a bad name by the 

 early travelers and investigators. They got a wrong idea 

 and passed it on to others. From their ox-train wagons 

 they looked out upon what seemed to them a dreary waste 

 of more than half desert land. They had left the trees 

 and the wood-bordered meadows behind, and they sent 

 back word that between the valleys and the mountains 

 was a trackless plain fit only for wild and roving bands 

 of buffalos. It was advertised that these vast regions were 

 uninhabitable. 



But later came the trans-continental railroads to con- 

 nect the oceans. Travelers whose investigations were made 

 from the windows of swiftly speeding cars told only of the 

 sandy plains. They did not stop to consider that perhaps 

 here was a country where Nature had left it for man to 

 solve a few problems by study and application. It would 



