HISTORICAL RESUME 37 



elements, but nevertheless they are so worn out 

 that they no longer produce the crops that pay 

 for the labor required to grow them, although 

 they were farmed with proper tillage and under 

 proper rotation of crops. 



Lexicographers define the word exhaust as to 

 drain, to use or expend wholly or until the supply 

 comes to an end ; to deprive wholly of strength, to 

 use up, to wear or tire out, to wear out. If, then, 

 these soils were abandoned because their owners 

 could no longer grow upon them sufficient crops 

 to support them, was not their fertility ex- 

 hausted? To us laymen of agriculture, it cer- 

 tainly seems that they were exhausted and that 

 our great Agricultural Department has promul- 

 gated a vicious doctrine, the teaching of which, if 

 followed by the farmers of America, will lead 

 every acre of our agriculture lands towards and 

 into the doom of the abandoned farm. 



Thus the Nation's worn and worn-out soils, 

 our stern inheritance, become its most vital dis- 

 ease, and our greatest business is threatened with 

 serious injury. 



We must realize that this is the most serious 

 problem confronting the husbandman to-day, and 

 unless we realize this menace to our nation's 

 prosperity and combat it, this nation of ours will 

 perish from the face of the earth as surely as 

 many of the dead nations of history perished 

 from the same cause. 



