VIIl. 



COXEY'S ARMY AND THE RUSSIAN THISTLE. 



A SKETCH OP THE PHILOSOPHY 



OF WEEDINESS/ 



Within about twenty years, a plant* of the pig- 

 weed family, — a tribe noted for its nomadic tendencies, 

 — has established itself over large areas in the Dakotas 

 and adjacent regions; it even threatens to overthrow 

 the agriculture of a present area of some twenty -five 

 thousand square miles, and is rapidly extending itself. 

 The weed has a bad reputation in Russia, whence it 

 came, and where, because of its incursions, "the culti- 

 vation of crops has been abandoned over large areas in 

 some of the provinces near the Caspian Sea." People 

 in the infested regions of our western plains have be- 

 ♦•ome so much alarmed at this persistent and prolific 

 intruder, that they have appealed to Congress for an 

 appropriation of money to help them to fight it. This 

 demand has been emphasized by representations of hard 

 times amongst the farmers of the west, and the passage 

 of the bill has been urged as a means of utilizing the 

 vast amount of restless labor represented by the Coxey 

 army movement. I suspect that if Congress were to 

 compel these redoubtable warriors to pull Russian this- ^ 



iRead before Section I., American Association for the Advancement of Scienofi-Qy^ ^\ 

 at Brooklyn, August, 1894. The reader may find another presentation of Jh^ «(^^ 

 essential ideas of this Essay in Bulletin 102, Cornell Experiment Station^ O . ^w w 



*Salsola Kali, var. Tragus, Called also Russian cactus. ^^ ^' j.^{^ 



13 SUR. (193) ^ rAJl V 



