CHAPTEE XII. 



HOW TO USE COMMERCIAL FERTILIZERS FOR THE MAIN- 

 TENANCE OF FERTILITY. 



The whole of the cotton growing section of the South Atlantic States 

 furnishes an object lesson of the ruin that comes about through the inju- 

 dicious use of commercial fertilizers, and the growing of cotton on the same 

 land year after year. This is most plainly seen on the rolling, red clay 

 uplands. Steep hillsides, which a wise agriculture would have left in the 

 protecting forest cover, have been cleared and cultivated in cotton. As the 

 humus in the soil was exhausted, the red clay tended to wash into gullies 

 under the great down pour of summer rains that prevail. Year after year the 

 gullies have been made larger till cultivation became impossible, and now all 

 over the upland country of the South these ruined and irreclaimable hillsides 

 are staring the traveler by rail in the face, and giving a bad impression of the 

 whole country ; and all the rivers run loaded with the wasted fertility of the 

 soil. Thousands of acres of these gullied hillsides can only be redeemed by 

 a restoration of the great forest cover, which should never have been removed 

 in the first place. The soil and the thousands of dollars' worth of fertilizers 

 which have been wasted in the culture of these hills are both gone, and the 

 land has been literally used up for a few crops of cotton. 



Under former conditions, when the large plantations with their army 

 of slaves were in their prime, a notion prevailed that cotton was the one crop 

 that would not fit into an improving rotation. Before the introduction of 

 commercial fertilizers the practice was to cultivate a piece of upland as long 

 as it would pay to grow the crop, and then to take up another piece, letting 

 the first grow up in pines. 



With the change in labor conditions, and the introduction of commercial 

 fertilizers, it was found that the old land could be made to produce a crop, 

 and then the farmers imagined that all they had to do to get a crop of cotton 

 was to use commercial fertilizers. These have been mainly purchased on 

 credit, with the invariable result that the manufacturers, in order to protect 



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