THE MAINTENANCE or FERTILITY 95 



series of experiments have been made with various rotations and also with 

 cereal crops grown on the same soil year after year with the use of commer- 

 cial fertilizers. They thus summarize the results of the continuous crop- 

 ping. "At the prices at which mixed fertilizers are sold in Ohio the attempt 

 to furnish all the nitrogen, as well as all the phosphoric acid and potash, re- 

 quired to produce increase in cereal crops grown in continuous culture, has 

 invariably resulted in pecuniary loss, although very large increase of crop 

 has been thus produced." "The rotation of cereals with nitrogen gathering 

 crops, therefore, has been shown to be absolutely essential to the profitable 

 use of commercial fertilizers in any form/' 



This confirms all that we have found through a long experience in the 

 cultivation of the soil. The constant use of complete fertilizer mixtures for 

 the production of sale crops only, has brought poverty to the soil over large 

 sections of the country, and of course poverty to the cultivator. It is for the 

 purpose of aiding in the bringing about of a change in this respect, and of 

 showing how fertilizers may be used profitably for the improvement of the 

 condition of the farm and the farmer alike, that we have undertaken the work 

 of writing this book. The writer is a Southern man, born and raised in the 

 South, and it has been his life's work to do all that he can to aid the 

 farmers of the South especially, to the adoption of better methods, for he is 

 convinced that the wasteful use of fertilizers and the continuous cropping 

 of the land in sale crops is responsible for the sad condition of farms and, 

 farmers in the South. And it is not only in the South, but in other parts 

 of the country, where the farmers are just beginning to realize that their soil 

 is becoming run down, and needs help, that there is danger that they, too, 

 will imagine that in the bag of fertilizer they can find all that they need, and 

 they are beginning to start in the same road towards "old fields" that the 

 South has travelled. The old, down hill road has been an easy one to follow, 

 and required little thought; the new one calls for careful study and experi- 

 mentation on the part of the farmer. He can no longer succeed by the old, 

 happy-go-lucky methods, but must become a student and a book farmer to a 

 great extent. By maintaining the fertility of his land he can alone hope to 

 succeed. This cannot be done by an annual gambling in fertilizers and the 

 growing of a single crop year after year on the same land. No matter what 

 the crops are, whether wheat on the plains of the Northwest, corn on the 

 prairies of the Middle West, tobacco in Virginia or Ohio, or cotton in the 

 South, single cropping everywhere tends to soil exhaustion and the depletion 

 of the farmer's resources. 



One characteristic of the Northern farmers in contrast to their brothers 

 in the South, is the readiness with which they see errors in their work and 



