232 An American Fruit-Farm 



the next generation — ^the care of the soil. It must 

 ever remain the test of all fruit-farming. Soil- 

 cropping means the extinction of our race, and 

 the steady depletion of the soil means the ultimate 

 conclusion of the history of all fruit valleys. 

 Enormously profitable fruit crops are now raised 

 in many parts of America. The longer the land is 

 tilled, too often the soil becomes thinner and poorer. 

 The history of the production of wheat and com 

 is of this depletion. Not only has the production 

 of com and wheat removed to new land, westward, 

 ever westward, but all along the line of removals 

 production has fallen. From New York, Penn- 

 sylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, 

 Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas, California, 

 Manitoba, the great wheat valleys of Canada 

 and British America, — ^whither next? The wheat 

 strength of the older States exhausted; of the 

 Middle West; of the old Northwest; of Minnesota 

 and the Dakotas; of Canada; a long, long line of 

 diminishing wheat-returns. And the day not far 

 distant when America must import wheat. There 

 are no more new lands in America. Will some 

 variety of wheat be originated that will produce 

 abundantly on lands hitherto unavailable for 

 wheat, as the vast reaches of aridity, of mountain 

 steeps in the West? All this means that farming 

 in America has passed, like my virgin vineyard, into 

 an older stage of less production and is becoming 

 like the farming in old countries. It means that 

 intensive farming must supplant extensive. If I 



