34 THE BUSINESS OF FARMING 



out marked symptoms, not appearing so bad as 

 it really is, yet becomes active npon some slight 

 occasion, " and plunges its victim into excru- 

 ciating suffering and lingering death. 



E. G. Dunn & Co. say that "true national pros- 

 perity springs from the soil," but it will never 

 spring from a soil so diseased that it produces 

 crops of a stunted growth. 



We have shown how a people living on a weak, 

 worn soil, are listless and without ambition. 

 Their soil yielding barely enough to furnish food 

 to sustain their lives, they have nothing left with 

 which to buy any of the comforts of life, or to 

 employ the means by which their soils can be 

 made to produce paying crops. Their energy is 

 sapped up by this discouraging environment. 

 This very condition exists to-day to an alarming 

 extent among the people in the " Highlands" or 

 mountain districts of the South. These people 

 are the descendants of the signers of the Declara- 

 tion of Independence, and heroes of the Revolu- 

 tionary War, and the blue blood of the best cit- 

 izens of colonial days courses through their veins. 

 They would be a proud, prosperous and useful 

 people were they but possessed of fertile soils, 

 but as it is, their spirit is broken, their pride is 

 gone, they are victims of a soil that has withdrawn 

 from them its bounty, because it has become worn 

 and unproductive. 



These same conditions are obtaining in every 

 portion of our country, even in the rich corn-belt 

 district. The writer sees it every day. Farms 

 once rich and fertile which have in the past made 

 their owners rich, but which now, after experi- 



