28 THE BUSINESS OF FABMING 



owners with marble hearted ingratitude aban- 

 doned the land that fed them and sought new 

 soils to conquer and despoil, for they said in their 

 hearts, America had of lands a plenty. 



Unspairingly did Clayton and Beverly of Vir- 

 ginia, and Eliot of New England, denounce the 

 methods of husbandry in vogue among the colon- 

 ists, methods by which tobacco was continuously 

 grown on the same land without the application 

 of any fertilizing material, until the soil, ex- 

 hausted of fertility, would no longer grow any 

 crop and then was abandoned. 



Those colonial farmers for years scratched the 

 surface of the soil with instruments which they 

 deluded themselves into believing were plows, and 

 so became imbued with the erroneous idea that 

 deep plowing ruined the land, which idea seems 

 to have been inherited by many of the farmers 

 even of this generation. 



The agricultural economy of conserving soil fer- 

 tility was never practiced by these people, but a 

 system of soil pillage and neglect was so practiced 

 by them that vast tracts of lands through every 

 part and portion of our eastern states, originally 

 abounding with a plethora of fertility, in less than 

 two generations were exhausted of their soil 

 wealth and became deserts too bleak to rear the 

 foodful plants that feed mankind. These lands* 

 thus robbed and plundered along the Jerusalem 

 and Jericho road of agriculture by the soil robber, 

 the highwayman of agriculture, lie bleeding and 

 sore, awaiting the kindly ministrations of agri- 

 culture's good Samaritan, the Soil Doctor. In 



