164 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



thieving, and perform in a generation that which the fathers 

 would have required an age to have accomplished. They 

 have mown into the ranks of fertility of western soils 

 as the modern Gatlinij gun into the ranks of men. While 

 the greater part of this loss of fertility is not due to that 

 carried oif in crops sold, yet the loss in this direction is a 

 noteworthy one. The Indiana Experiment Station has esti- 

 mated the phosphoric acid, potash and nitrogen abstracted 

 in the annual crops grown in Indiana, at the market rates 

 for these materials, at $104,603,700. The combined efiects 

 of fertility removed by crops and by the results of tillage 

 have been to send crops down the scale of 3'ield with a rush. 

 Some years ago I had occasion to estimate for my classes 

 at the Agricultural College of Missouri the decreasing yields 

 of the corn and wheat crops, and found, beginning with 

 1864, that in successive periods of five years each the corn 

 crop stood as follows: for the first period, 30.8 bushels; 

 for the second period, 32.1 bushels; for the third period, 



27.1 bushels; for the fourth period, 26.6 bushels per acre. 

 Since then the crop has remained practically stationary. 

 The United States government, however, shows that for the 

 country from 1869 to 1879 the yield of corn was 24.7 

 bushels, and from 1879 to 1889 24.1 bushels. As six of the 

 Mississippi valley States raise more than one-half of the corn 

 of the country, while the entire corn States of the west raise 

 more than three-fourths of the corn of the country, it is 

 evident that the decline of crops has not reached its 

 climax. In sixteen years the crops of Kansas went from 



17.2 bushels of wheat per acre down to 13.1 bushels, and is 

 now still lower than that. Other States show the same 

 general decline. The loss of 401 bushels of wheat per 

 hundred acres, to say nothing of the decline in price, cuts 

 most vitally into the luxuries and comfort that may annually 

 be brought into the homes of Kansas farmers. Such farm- 

 ing is farming towards poverty and despair, and away 

 from civilization and culture. The reader will under- 

 stand, of course, that the illustrations given represent the 

 tendency of western agriculture, and are only a few taken 

 from the multitude of facts in my possession to represent a 

 law involved in the efiects of western extensive tillage. 



