THE MAINTENANCE OF FERTILITY 99 



around him, if possible. It is not always the sign of the best farming for a 

 man to grow a specially large crop of something on a small area of land. The 

 phenomenal yields of corn, for instance, which have been produced in compe- 

 titions for premiums, are interesting mainly as showing what can be done 

 with heavy feeding and good culture, but they are usually financial failures. 

 What we should aim at is to get the widest possible margin between the cost 

 of the crop and its sale value. This calls for skillful management of the 

 land, and the best of cultivation, as well as a wise selection of what is to be 

 sold from the farm. Some of our Southern friends have imagined that the 

 way out of the old one-crop farming is a diversification by which the farmer 

 shall grow someting of everything his climate will allow, and shall not buy 

 anything which he can grow. This sort of aimless diversification is not what 

 we want, but a systematized agriculture suited to the conditions under 

 which the farmers live. The cotton farmer in the warm soils of the 

 Southern seaboard could doubtless grow some wheat, but he will soon find 

 that he can buy all the flour he needs more cheaply and of better quality then 

 he can grow the wheat and have it manufactured on a small scale. The 

 farmer in Southern Maryland could doubtless grow a little cotton, as they 

 once did under the old home manufacturing practice, but he would soon find 

 that he had better stick to his wheat or tobacco and buy his cotton goods. 

 The same rule holds good in all parts of the country. The money crop of 

 each section has become such through the operation of natural laws, and none 

 can afford to ignore these. 



SOME OF THE MISTAKES MADE. 



When a farmer moves from one section to another having an entirely 

 different soil and climate, he needs to study his new conditions well. He will 

 in fact, have to unlearn a great deal and to learn things that he did not for- 

 merly need to learn. Going into a new section, one is apt to imagine that 

 he can do a great deal better than the people already there, and as he has 

 been a good farmer in his old location, he is apt to think that the same 

 methods which were best there will be the best in his new location. The 

 people among whom you have come may not be farming as well as they do 

 in the section where you formerly lived, but there will always be practices in 

 every old settled section which are the outgrowth of experience in that partic- 

 ular soil and climate, and which a newcomer cannot afford to ignore. North- 

 ern men coming into the cotton belt, as a rule, always want to grow something 

 else rather than cotton. They see that under the old methods, the cotton 

 farmers and the cotton farms have grown poor, while the fertilizer manufac- 



