548 AGRICULTURE. 



ground, and sacked, and delivered to the channels of trade. It 

 may become a question whether clubs, granges, alliances, may 

 own mills where all members can have their own supplies 

 ground to order. The manufacture being simplified as above 

 would facilitate such arrangements. It is also a question 

 whether the State, as for example, South Carolina and Florida, 

 should monopolize the great phosphate deposits, and deliver the 

 finished product, no less than the raw material, to commerce. 

 In the modern view, that the State should control all natural 

 monopolies, this last view of the question cannot be lightly 

 passed over. 



In concluding this article, it is desired that it may be clearly 

 understood that it makes no pretension to exhaustive technical 

 treatment of any part of the subject. The design has been to 

 summarize general principles with suggestive comment, as more 

 appropriate to a chapter of this kind. 



I believe that I have shown : That the weak point in Amer- 

 ican agriculture is the lack of organic matter in our soils, and 

 that the bad effects of that deficiency are intensified by the 

 peculiarities of our climate ; that fallow crops and animal 

 manures are the sources from which the necessary organic mat- 

 ter must be supplied, and that, therefore, these substances must 

 be the basis of every scientific system of fertilization ; that 

 chemical or mineral manures, or natural guanos, which consti- 

 tute the commercial fertilizers, cannot be successfully substituted 

 for, but must supplement, fallows and animal manures ; that the 

 methods of preparing and using commercial manures need re- 

 study at the hands of science, so as to determine more accurately 

 the economies which govern their manipulation and use ; that 

 the methods of analysis and valuation in common use are inac- 

 curate and often misleading, and the laws regulating inspections, 

 in some cases, are vexatious, foolish, and inoperative, merely 

 adding to the burdens of the farmer, and causing additional 

 expense. 



I have shown, moreover, that pecuniary considerations domi- 

 nate in the practical application of scientific principles to pro- 

 ductive industry ; that under existing conditions, with rare and 

 unimportant exceptions, in American agriculture the cost of 

 production exceeds the net price of the product, and that, there- 



