CHAPTER IV 



OUR WORN SOILS THE GREATEST MENACE TO THE 



BUSINESS OF FARMING AND HOW TO 



RESTORE THEM 



THE menace of worn soils, the farm's most 

 serious problem, deserves further comment 

 in a special chapter, notwithstanding we have al- 

 ready said much about it and other menaces to 

 the business of farming. 



We have shown how the "whip and spur" 

 method of farming so long practiced in the United 

 States, by which our soils have been subjected to 

 the process of getting all you can out of them with- 

 out the return of anything to maintain or increase 

 fertility, has so exhausted vast areas of our soils 

 that they no longer produce paying crops. Any 

 soil that will not produce crops that more than 

 pay for the cost of production, is a worn-out soil, 

 and we must not be blind to the fact that they exist 

 even to alarming proportions in every part and 

 portion of our country, yea, in those portions that 

 boast of their rich soils. 



We have shown that a greedy husbandry, a 

 sordid tillage, lack of capital, deceptive theories 

 like crop rotation, etc., have been producers of 

 worn and worn-out soils. 



There are scores of farms in the abandoned 

 farm districts of the East, a humid region where 



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