298 



SOILS 



Consider for a moment the ancient man with his sickle 

 in one of our Western wheat fields alongside a modern 

 combined header and thresher, which takes twenty feet 

 at a "through" and drops the grain off in sacks; and im- 

 agine, if you can, how many of these fellows with the 

 sickle it would take to harvest our immense crops of 

 60,000,000 acres of wheat. Put our ancient father with his 

 crooked stick for a plow in one of these large wheat fields 

 and count up, if you can, at some idle hour how many 

 like him it would take to do the work of the man who 



A DEPARTMENT OF THE FARM-FACTORY 



to-day drives the modern steam gang-plow at the rate 

 of ten miles per hour, taking twenty-four one-foot furrows 

 at a "through." 



If we to-day used the old hand methods and produced 

 our present food supply, fifty millions of people more would 

 need to be added to our population, and all of us would 

 be required in our agricultural fields, and even then we 

 should need to eat sparingly and to fast often, else the 

 day of little harvest might come and we perish alto- 

 gether. 



