Part II.] IMPROVEMENT OF LIVE STOCK. 87 



THE IMPEOYEMENT OF LIVE STOCK. 



R. A. HAYNE, AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION DEPARTMENT, INTERNATIONAL 

 HARVESTER COMPANY, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. 



We all agree on the great fundamental truth, that the soil 

 is the foundation on which depend all material things. All 

 industries, all enterprises, all the doings commonly known as 

 business are activities based on the use or abuse of the provi- 

 dential gifts called natural resources. 



When these activities and manipulations are analyzed and 

 followed they are found to be ultimately dependent on the 

 one great resource, — the soil. Take away the soil's produc- 

 tivity, make it barren, and the world's business will stop. 

 Great, because from it directly and indirectly come the food 

 and clothing for mankind. Great, because it is one resource 

 we can use and still keep. 



Take the coal and iron out of the earth and they are out for 

 good. Cut off the forests that are counted as resources, and 

 in this generation and the next we cannot grow more trees 

 like them; but the soil was here three hundred years ago when 

 the "Mayflower" landed at Plymouth Rock, waiting for the 

 settlers to clear away patches and begin growing crops, and 

 it is still here through years of neglect and abuse, still growing 

 crops. In some places it has grown thin and the crops light, 

 but that is the fault of the tillers, not of the soil. 



It is not my purpose to sharply criticize the methods, or 

 the people who employed them, that have depleted the soil's 

 fertility in the older parts of the United States. The deed is 

 done; we cannot change the past. The first settlers played 

 their part well, better perhaps than we would have done in 

 their places. Criticism of the past will not accomplish good 

 like effort to make best use of the present. We have the 

 situation to meet. We are the keepers of the soil. 



