152 CLOVER CULTURE. 



other evils. We know, for example, that he pays more than 

 his proper share of taxes ; that he is the victim of trusts and 

 combines, and that in many localities he is compelled to pay 

 exorbitant freights and excessive rates of interest. We do 

 mean to say, however, that where a system of agriculture has 

 been adopted for any great length of time, these evils diminish 

 in their intensity or disappear altogether. In fact, it is the 

 one-sided system of agriculture adopted in many parts of the 

 West that has rendered it possible to form some combinations 

 and extort usurious rates of interest. In this correct system 

 of agriculture wherever established, the tame grasses must 

 form an essential and indispensible part, and chief among 

 these grasses will always be found the legumes, and especially 

 the clovers. 



The "way out," if it be a main travelled road leading to 

 the city of refuge and not a by-path leading into the forest or 

 a morass, must provide for retaining soil fertility and 

 especially nitrogen. As we have before shown, there is no 

 present way by which that can be done effectively and at the 

 same time economically except by the intelligent use of the 

 legumes. Theorists may speculate as they please, but when 

 the available fertility of any soil, whether of the farm or the 

 district, is so far exhausted that it will not produce paying 

 crops, as it will be in time by continuous cultivation of the 

 non-leguminous plants, it matters very little what political 

 party is in power, or what the rate of taxation or transpor- 

 tation, or what kind of currency may be in use. The " way 

 out " for the western farmer that does not provide for the 

 conservation of nitrogen and its increase, at least to the 

 measure of the supply of the other elements of the fertility in 

 the soil, will lead him into worse trouble than he complains 

 of now. It is for the reason that it furnishes the farmer 

 with clear, definite and precise information on a matter of the 

 first importance that we regard the discoveries of Helreigel, 

 Wilfarth and Atwater as among the greatest of the present 

 age. If this important element of fertility cannot, by reason 

 of deficient rainfall or some other climatic or soil conditions, 

 be furnished by the red and mammoth clovers, then resort 

 must be had to alfalfa, and where this cannot be grown, the 

 supply of nitrogen must be secured by the use of some other 

 legume. The " way out " must be sown with legumes. ^ 



It is not enough, however, to have a supply of fertility in 

 the soil. There must be some way of using to advantage 

 the products furnished by this raw material provided by 

 nature and husbanded by man. No country ever became 

 permanently rich which was burdened with the trasportation 



