ECONOMIC CAUSES OF DEPLETION 85 



Cominisaiou holds, is due in large part, uot to excessive 

 profit, but to sheer waste. 



There is need of applying business methods to the 

 question of what shall be consumed on the farm and 

 what sent to market. Our exports of farm products 

 constitute a question of supreme national importance. 

 To every hundred dollars' worth of exports from Can- 

 ada the main industries contribute as follows: Fisheries, 

 $5; manufactories, $12; mining, $15; lumbering, $16; 

 and agriculture, $51. In that proportion do our in- 

 dustries pay our debts to the outside world. Now, some 

 of this agricultural export trade is bad business. " The 

 butter exported from Denmark to Great Britain in 

 1909 was 197,751,024 lbs., worth $49,802,400; and 

 that almost fifty million dollars' worth of butter carried 

 out of Denmark less of the elements of fertility than 

 did each thousand tons of hay shipped out of Quebec 

 to New England. There is a contrast indeed in the 

 national administration of agriculture ! Fifty million 

 dollars' worth of butter impoverishing the land less 

 than each thousand tons of hay, worth at most, 

 $14,000!"* 



Finally, sufficient attention is not paid to sheer ex- 

 cellence of product. In every neighborhood there are 

 a few farmers whose products command a much higher 

 price than those of the majority. " The Danes take 

 from England enough more money than any other 

 nation obtains for an equal quantity of butter, bacon, 

 and eggs, because of their superior quality, to pay for 

 their whole educational work and to have a balance 

 over. For the superiority of their butter, bacon, and 



• CoDBervatlon CX>mmlHHlon, III, p. 103. 



