116 THE BUSINESS OF FAEMING 



nourished by the same rains, the one plant will 

 seem to poison the soil and rob it of its fertility, 

 and the other plant, while taking from the soil 

 all the elements it needs for fruitful growth, gives 

 back to the soil more fertility than it consumes, 

 yet we can if we will, observe the phenomena of 

 plant life and growth, and grow as much as pos- 

 sible of those plants that build up the soil. 



Nature, having built the original soil by a lav- 

 ish use of organic matter, man, when he brought 

 it into cultivation began to grow upon it those 

 crops for gain, which, as we have said, never give 

 to the soil any fertility in compensation for the 

 food they take from the soil to build them up and 

 ripen their harvest of fruit or grain. The soil 

 being new and fertile the harvest of these crops 

 was large, the husbandman waxed fat from their 

 sale, the avarice of greed became a passion, so 

 year by year the husbandman continued the 

 growing of these crops so that the soil was slowly 

 but surely mined of its fertility, but it resented 

 its treatment, inflicted the awful punishment of 

 withdrawing its bounty and became the sick 

 worn-out soil found not only on the abandoned 

 farm, but in all parts of our Union. 

 So when the "soil doctor" was called upon to 

 the diagnosis of this worn soil, to fathom its ills 

 and prescribe a course of treatment, he found it 

 stripped of its organic matter and humus. It 

 was cold, compact, without capacity for ventila- 

 tion. Soil bacteria had abandoned it because it 

 furnished no food for their maintenance, nor fa- 

 vorable environment for their existence. He 

 found it but a soil skeleton stripped of its flesh, 



