38 The Farmfitead 



Fifteen crops of wheat of 25 bushels per 

 acre require 433 pounds of nitrogen, or one- 

 tenth of the amount which the soil lost during 

 the years of cropping. This soil, under "bo- 

 nanza farming," has lost outright nitrogen suffi- 

 cient for 155 crops, each requiring as much 

 nitrogen as does a crop of 25 bushels of 

 wheat per acre. When the amount wasted on 

 a single acre is multiplied by the acres of the 

 vast, fertile wheat plains of the west, where 

 "bonanza farming" is carried on, the loss of 

 nitrogen to our country is seen to be so great 

 as to appal the thoughtful man who looks for- 

 ward to the generations who will want this 

 element in the not distant future. Rappily, 

 this "bonanza farming" has its own cure. 

 When mining -farming reduces the yield so that 

 Xirofits vanish, then these great farms will be 

 cut up into modest -sized ones, true homes will 

 rise, intermittent labor and the tramp harvest- 

 hand will disappear, and the last and only con- 

 dition which tends to produce an uninstructed 

 peasant class will cease to exist. 



The other great " bonanza " industry which 

 still remains and which affects agriculture, and 

 the land directly, is lumbering. This, like " bo- 

 nanza" wheat farming, may be classed as a min- 

 ing industry, carried on at the surface instead 

 of in the bowels of the earth. Without rational 



