HISTOEICAL BESUME 27 



green manuring. When these nations began to 

 act along the lines of this splendid advice, their 

 soils began to appreciate their good treatment, 

 and poured into the laps of their husbandmen 

 their increased and paying crop yields, and the 

 truth was exemplified that even poor, dumb soils 

 can show their appreciation of good treatment 

 and compensation. 



Every living nation of the old continent to-day 

 which ranks lowest in the scale of nations, whose 

 people are steeped in ignorance and are wasted 

 and diseased with famine, is a nation which pos- 

 sesses in abundance worn-out soils, or soils which 

 no longer produce paying crops. 



You may trace the progress of agriculture from 

 the time that God made it the first business when 

 He planted a garden and put Adam into it to 

 " dress it and to keep it," to the time when 

 America was first settled, and you will find that 

 generally agriculture has been carried on un- 

 der that system that has led to the soil's neglect. 



When the tide of immigration flowed to- 

 ward the shores of newly discovered America, 

 this continent of ours became peopled with men 

 who brought with them this same spirit of soil 

 neglect that had been their inheritance. The 

 early colonists of Canada, New York, Pennsyl- 

 vania, Virginia, Maryland, etc., found the land 

 rich in the elements of fertility that Nature gave 

 it. By a continual system of plowing, sowing, 

 and reaping, it yielded for years bountiful crops 

 of cereals, vegetables and tobacco, and when by 

 this process the soil was strangled with its wasted 

 fertility and the farms were despoiled, their 



