1891.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 13 



through the history of this country, we shall find some 

 striking facts which bear upon this subject. At the begin- 

 ning of this century men were talking of " the inexhaustible 

 fertility " of the western portion of the State of Vermont. 

 In 1825 they were talking about "the inexhaustible fer- 

 tility" of the Mohawk and Genesee valleys in the State 

 of New York. I have looked over the files of an agricult- 

 ural paper published at Albany in 1834, and several years 

 subsequently, and it is amusing to see the character of the 

 articles running through all those papers. They simply held 

 out the idea that there was no limit to the productive 

 capacity of the soil. It is true that a few thinking men, 

 who were lookinsr forward, claimed that exhaustion of the 

 fertility of the soil was possible, and some even went so far 

 as. to say that in some parts of that section evidences of 

 such exhaustion were already manifesting themselves ; but, 

 on the other hand, the great majority of the writers took 

 the ground that the soil could never be impoverished, and 

 that the farmers could go on raising wheat year after year, 

 putting nothing back upon the soil, but dumping their 

 manure into the canal or burning it, anything to get rid 

 of it. Then about the year 1850 we find this " inexhaustible 

 fertility" that they talked about located farther west. For 

 some reason it had crept toward the west, and at that time 

 had got as far as Ohio. In 1875 it had pushed out as far as 

 Minnesota ; and in 1890 we find that it has gone still farther, 

 and men are now talking about the " inexhaustible fertility" 

 of the Red River valley. 



But in this section of the country men have ceased to talk 

 about " the inexhaustible fertility of the soil." In fact, that 

 is a thing that does not exist, and never has existed. We 

 come, then, to the second period, that of soil exhaustion. 

 When this period is reached in any agricultural country, it 

 is really a blessing to that country. By the continued crop- 

 ping of one kind of crop, wheat, for example, as was the 

 case in some parts of the Mohawk and Genesee valleys 

 fifty-five or sixty -years ago, the elements of plant food 

 required to produce a crop of wheat were entirely exhausted, 

 the crops failed, and men began to ask themselves the ques- 

 tion, "Why is it that our fields yield less and less crops 



