16 NUT GROWING 



rooster that crows when a hen has laid an egg. The 

 engineer laid the egg. The large immediate returns 

 are the large immediate returns of a man who puts 

 his hand into another man's pocket. 



An unfortunate part of irrigation projects often 

 lies in the fact that beautiful tracts of land are de- 

 stroyed unnecessarily. So long as good land may 

 be purchased at less than a dollar per acre in some 

 parts of the south it is not yet time for us to carry 

 drainage projects and irrigation projects into terri- 

 tory where the result will simply extend second-rate 

 farming and first-rate engineering. 



Individuals and governments loan money for 

 drainage and irrigation projects. If the same 

 amount of money were to be devoted to the work 

 of our agricultural colleges the world of to-morrow 

 would be benefited. Individuals in particular and 

 the present generation in general profit by our waste- 

 ful promotion of second-class agriculture. In the 

 words of the poet they ask, "What has posterity 

 done for me that I should do anything for poster- 

 ity ?" They are to shift the cost of engineering 

 plants to a later generation when the time comes for 

 plants of farmers to need more fertilizer. On the 

 whole, to-morrow's population is to be the loser 

 from such drainage and irrigation projects of to-day 

 as are untimely. 



According to the 1914 report from our Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture forty per cent of the land in 

 the United States is non-tillable. Aside from the 

 non-tillable land which consists of swamps in which 



