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THE IREIGAT10N AGE. 



THE CAMPBELL SYSTEM OF SOIL CULTURE: 

 WHAT IS IT? 



BY H. W. CAMPBELL, BETHANY, NEBRASKA. 



The so-called Campbell system of soil culture, that 

 is attracting such widespread attention throughout 

 western Kansas, Nebraska, eastern Colorado and the 

 Panhandle of Texas because of the marvelous results in 

 wheat, corn, potatoes, sugar beets and fruit trees that 

 were grown by this system during the past six years, 

 and especially the increased acreage of 1904-5, have now 

 assumed the proportions of something more than a mere 

 pet theory. 



Eailway companies who operate lines traversing 

 the above territory now recognize and acknowledge that 

 it has been the principal factor in a vast increase of ton- 

 nage and bringing in hundreds of new families who are 

 building up ideal and prosperous farm homes. 



Although any of these railroad companies would 

 have gladly endorsed scientific soil culture twelve years 

 ago, when we first began appealing to them and the 

 farmers, they, like the farmers, were skeptical. 



Right here let me call attention to some facts we 

 have just obtained from the superintendents of the re- 

 form schools in Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa, and that is, 

 that less than ten out of over one thousand boys con- 

 fined in these institutions in these three States come 

 from the farm direct. Is not this alone sufficient cause 

 to render most sincere thanks to God for the means that 

 shall not only bring a few families from the city, but 

 shall encourage many young men to remain upon the 

 farm? 



Did it ever occur to you that the building of new 

 houses and barns upon the farm and the buying of better 

 stock, new buggies, pianos, carpets, books, pictures, in 

 short, all that goes to make the farm home pleasant and 

 attractive, and the farmer and his family happy and 

 contented, depended entirely upon the yield of your cul- 

 tivated fields ? Then is there any one thing that means 

 more to the farmer and his family, to every branch of 

 business from the peanut stand on the corner to the 

 International Harvester Co., than such an advanced 

 knowledge of the general principles of soil culture as 

 shall enable every farmer to accomplish what a few 

 have already done. 



A Country Home. 



While they have waited they have watched; seeing is 

 believing. 



As we ride over these different railroads today 

 through this territory and note the vast improvement of 

 the many old towns, in their streets, sidewalks and 

 buildings, as well as new and more substantial business 

 blocks, we know there is but one cause for it, and that 

 is the greatly increased prosperity of the farmers in 

 the surrounding country. Then as we speed on we note 

 the cheering, stimulating change in the country by an 

 increased acreage of these fertile prairies under culti- 

 vation, more young trees and orchards, as well as many 

 new and substantial farm houses. Nothing affords us 

 greater pleasure than to note the firm step of these 

 farmers and their expression of countenance, indicating 

 faith in the country and high hopes for an ideal farm 

 home in the very near future. In observing all this we 

 were frequently constrained to say "God bless these 

 farmers." They will never know the woes and sorrows 

 of their predecessors, who know nothing about scientific 

 soil culture, and again we appeal for blessings upon 

 these farmers (many of whom we know have come from 

 the large cities). Their children will never know the 

 sorrows of the slums of the great cities. 



A farmer on the high level prairie of western Ne- 

 braska, near Trenton, in Hitchcock County, in 1904, 

 when 90 per cent of a large acreage of wheat was a total 

 failure, and the best yield in the county was a field 

 adjoining this farm and only yielded ten bushels per 

 acre, and yet this field handled by the Campbell system, 

 and without any irrigation, yielded forty-one bushels of 

 sixty-pound wheat per acre, 1,640 bushels from forty 

 acres. 



The Pomeroy model farm at Hill City, Graham 

 County, Kas., the same year harvested wheat that yielded 

 forty and a half bushels when adjoining land that was 

 even considered better was not worth the cutting. 



A banker at Grainfield, Kas., who hired all his work 

 done, prepared sixty acres of ground under this system 

 in 1903 and harvested in 1904 enough wheat so that he 

 was able from its proceeds to pay all expense of prepara- 

 tion, harvesting, threshing and marketing and had left 

 as a net profit $16 per acre, or $960, just 10 per cent 

 on a valuation of $160 per acre, and this away out in 

 western Kansas, when many failed entirely. 



At Walsenberg, Colo., at em altitude of 6,800 feet, 

 forty bushels of corn per acre was grown by this system 

 in 1904 and 1905. 



