.Tune. 1921. 



SCIENTIFIC AGRICULTURE 



2G7 



wheu it is diluted accordiny- t<i directions I'm- applica- 

 tion to the soil the number of these haeleria thus added 

 to the soil by the "vaccine'' would be like a drop in a 

 barrel. 



If, as is claimed, the virtue of .the "soil vaccine" de- 

 pends on its bacterial content, and if the sample tested 

 by us is an average sample, then the above bacteriolo- 



gical findings iudii-ate that the "vaccine" is not all 

 that it is claimed to be. 



While our crop tests in general are not very far ad- 

 vanced an examination of two rows of corn, one of whicli 

 was treated with the ".soil vaccine", and the otlier witli 

 a light dressing of stable manure, shows decidedly in 

 favor of the stable manure. 

 (Guelph June 20, 1921). 



The Task of the Technical Agriculturist 



An Outsider's View. 



Agriculture is sometimes treated as a business, and 

 tlie land OM'ner considered in his capacity of the great 

 cai)italist, whose total holdings exceed those of all 

 other capitalists manyfold. At other times we think 

 of the farmer as a laborer, and of his occupation as 

 labor, with its concomitant considerations of wage and 

 hours. Both views are obviously justified, and botli 

 fail to treat agricultui'e with the i)roper breadth. 



For agriculture is neither a business nor a calling — ■ 

 it is our attempt to solve the problem of maintaining 

 human life on this planet, and of improving its condi- 

 tion. Were it not for the fact tiiat one man's labor, 

 on ordinary soil, will more than suffice to maintain 

 one average family, organized society could not exist, 

 and the world would be ]ieo]jled by a race of hopeless 

 tieings, struggling for a bare existence, aiul sacrificing 

 the old and weak, as is now clone in lands whei'e a re- 

 dundant population or an exhausted soil, inake the 

 burden of supporting a family more than the workers 

 of a family can bear. 



Consequently, any attempt to intelligently stud.v 

 agriculture cannot be successfully confined to the 

 physical problems of the improvement of livestock and 

 food plants, nor can it limit its investigation of econ- 

 omics to tlie question of buying and selling to the best 

 advantage. To these details of study must be added an 

 intelligent analysis of the economic lusto.i-y of the sur- 

 face, and to turn from hunting and the pasturage of 

 cattle to the tilling of the soil. 



For our i)urpose it will be unnecessary to go back fur- 

 ther than the middle of tlie eighteentli century, when 

 the invention of machinery and the accompanying per- 

 fection of our financial system commenced to influence 

 the course of human life to any appreciable extent. 



At that time societ.v, in the two states which have 

 furnished Canada with the majority of lier iioi)ulatioii 

 — Great Britain and France — had, for the first time 

 since the fall of the Roman Empire, reached a condition 

 of general civilization. Arts and letters, the science of 

 government and the conception of ethics, the private 

 comfort of the people and the public order of tlie state 

 had all reached as high a standard as ever before in 

 human history. Yet, and for one reason alone, the 

 change that has occurred since then far exceeds in 

 magnitude the total difference lietween the England of 

 the Georges and that of Alfred — for machinci-y in the 

 modern sense, did not exist. 



In 1750 each state of Europe, and almost each vil- 

 lage, was an economic unit, producing the total require- 

 ments of its people in food, fuel and clothing. Luxuries 

 were imported, and some articles of foreign iiroductioii. 

 as for example, sugar, tobacco and cotton, were already 



becoming necessities, but, in general, a threat to close 

 the English seas to ships would have involved nothing 

 more than discomfort to the average Englishman. 



At this time, North America had been partly colon- 

 ized, but these colonies were patterned on their mother 

 countries, and were communities who did not contem- 

 plate any other destiny than to produce their own re- 

 (luirements, and to consume their own production, with 

 a modest trade in ])iirely American commodities liar- 

 tered for the si)ecial articles M'hich they liad not yet 

 attempted to jn'oduce. 



The long strain of the Napoleonic wars left our 

 mother countries in a condition of depleted wealtli, 

 without causing a corresponding decrease in population 

 and it was in the attempt to correct this state that re- 

 source was had to the expedient of emigration to the 

 virgin lands of the West, and that men turned their 

 thought to the studies that produced the steam engine. 



The untouched soil to M'hich this great rush of people 

 was directed ptoved, as might have been foreseen, 

 ready, witli a less amount of labor than had been the 

 case in the other lands, to produce crops far beyond the 

 needs of the settlers, and the lack of a landowner, de- 

 manding half the colonist's labor to pay his rent, left 

 a great projiortion of this available for sale. These 

 food commodities were naturally elieaper tlian those of 

 the high priced lands of Europe, and the inevitable 

 result was to drive European communities to seek for 

 some method of obtaining them. The application of 

 power to manufacture was one result, as it enabled the 

 English laliorer to create commodities with which to 

 l)uy American wheat. Eipially natural was the devel- 

 opment of power trans])ortation that made this barter 

 physicalh" possible. 



There remained the difficulty of obtaining capital 

 with wliich to create these means of production and 

 transportation. Uj) to this period in the world's his- 

 tory, money had meant silver and gold, and tlie supply 

 of these metals was totally inadequate to jn-ovide tlie 

 means of financing the creation of a New World. Thus, 

 slowly but surel.y, was developed the modern system of 

 credit, by which natural resources, community action, 

 and even private agreement could be used as the basis 

 for an issue of paper money. 



With this last difficulty overcome, the jiroeess of 

 lieopling the New World, and of transforming the more 

 advanced portions of Europe into huge workshops, 

 proceeded at a constantly accelerated rate, and, indeed, 

 was extended to the point wliere labor commenced to 

 abandon the farms of Eastern North America for the 

 factory or foi' the virgin soil of the prairies. 



How far this process could have continued will never 



