212 HANDY-BOOK OF HUSBANDRY. 



" Practically, the human excrement of the whole country Is 

 " nearly all so disposed of as to be lost to the soil. The present 

 " population of the United States is not far from 35,000,000. On 

 " the basis of the above calculation, their annual food contains 

 '' over 200,000 tons of phosphoric acid, being about the amount 

 "contained in 900,000 tons of bones, which, at the price of the 

 " best flour of bone, (for manure,) would be worth over $50,000,000. 

 " It would be a moderate estimate to say that the other constitu- 

 " ents of food found in night-soil are of least equal value with the 

 " other constituents of the bone, and to assume $50,000,000 as 

 *' the money value of the wasted night-soil of the United States. 



" In another view, the importance of this waste cannot be es- 

 " timated in money. Money values apply rather to the products 

 " pf labor and to the exchange of these products. The waste of 

 " fertilizing matter reaches farther than the destruction or exchange 

 " of products ; — it lessens the ability to produce. 



" If mill-streams were failing year by year, and steam were 

 *' yearly losing force, and the ability of men to labor were yearly 

 " growing less, the doom of our prosperity would not be more 

 " plainly written than if the slow but certain impoverishment of 

 " our soil were sure to continue. 



" Fortunately, it will not continue always. So long as there are 

 " virgin soils this side of the Pacific, which our people can ravage 

 "at will, thoughtless earth-robbers will move West and till them. 

 " But the good time is coming, when (as now in China and in 

 *' Japan) men must accept the fact that the soil is not a warehouse 

 "to be plundered — only a factory to be worked. Then they 

 " will save their raw material, instead of wasting it, and aided by 

 " nature's wonderful loom, will weave, over and over again, the 

 " fabric by which we live and prosper. Men will build up as fast 

 " as men destroy, old matters will be reproduced in new forms, 

 " and as the decaying forests feed the growing wood, so will all 

 " consumed food yield food again. 



" The stupendous sewers which have just been completed in 

 " London, at a cost of $20,000,000, and which challenge admira- 

 " tion, as monuments of engineering achievement, are a great 



