MANURING AND WORN-OUT SOILS 343 



States. The older soils of the East, which have 

 been cultivated, more or less, for two or three cen- 

 turies, were the first to decline. Gradually the 

 area of worn-out soils is extending westward. Even 

 some of the Mississippi Valley soils that fifty years 

 ago were thought to be of inexhaustible fertility, 

 are now said to be about worn-out. 



The history of the East is being repeated in the 

 West. The virgin soils there are now said to have 

 an inexhaustible wealth of fertility; yet sooner or 

 later the crops on even these wonderful soils will 

 decline. Tnen those agricultural freebooters whose 

 whole idea of tilling the soil seems to be that of 

 merely skimming off the cream of Nature's in- 

 crease, will pass on to virgin soils, leaving 

 behind land that it will take years of careful 

 farming to bring back to its normal productive- 

 ness. 



The agricultural history of our country, so far as 

 soil management is concerned, is far from being 

 a credit to the genius of our people. It has been 

 marked by the most ruthless soil robbery on the 

 largest scale that the world has ever known. 

 Virgin lands have been cleared, their fatness wrung 

 from them with little or no returns, until the crops 

 have dwindled to but a fraction of the bountiful 

 harvests of pioneer days. Then the son, who has 

 fallen heir to the inevitable result of the spend- 

 thrift farming of his father, moves West. The 

 most disheartening feature of all is that nine times 

 out of ten he follows there the same course which 

 has brought poverty to so many farm homes in the 

 East. Western farming is as improvident now as 

 Eastern farming has been, and still is to a con- 

 siderable extent. We cannot escape from the 

 criticism of J. J. Hill: "American farmers have 



