1891.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 131 



on clearing and improving, at vast expense of energy, large 

 tracts of land which could only be cultivated at a positive 

 loss. At least one-third of all the cleared lands in New 

 England should never have been improved. Left in timber, 

 an annual harvest could have been secured and large profits 

 realized from this land, which has not given a clear dollar 

 .since the last brush heap was burned. 



All of our troubles and difficulties come from the trans- 

 gression of law : laws of agriculture, laws of forestry, laws 

 of springs and brooks, laws of supply, laws of fertility and 

 of plants for it, laws of economy, laws of energy and work, 

 laws of education, laws of finance. 



The Northern farm boy studied Hebrew, and shut his eyes 

 to the rape which was being committed on mother earth, 

 when he should have studied how plants and animals grow 

 and feed and live. The Southern boy studied Latin when 

 he should have been studying chemistry, not dreaming that 

 millions of value lay rotting and wasting in the neglected 

 cotton seed and behind the old gin-house. 



The next decade was ushered in with cannon filled to the 

 mouth with deadly shot and shell. Their reverberations 

 proclaimed to all the world that another of nature's laws had 

 been broken, and that the penalty was about to fall. Large 

 numbers of producers were quickly converted into con- 

 sumers ; prices reached high-water mark, inventive genius 

 saw its opportunity. The farmer had two cultivators, and 

 but one man to use them. With a few bolts and bars they 

 were united, and the productive power of the corn grower 

 was more than doubled. Efficiency was increased ten- 

 fold by substituting the two-horse for the hand-planter. 

 Headers, binders and gang ploughs enabled each man to 

 produce six times as much wheat as he could by the old 

 method . 



The war closed, consumers were again transformed into 

 producers. An abundant currency, phenomenal increase in 

 the number and size of the cities, extension of railways and 

 unbounded faith in the future, caused prices for land and its 

 products to recede slowly from their lofty heights. Mean- 

 time, new lands were opened up in forest and prairie with 

 unabated energy, and depletion of soil fertility was still 



