MAP OF COUNTRY SURROUNDING SHANGHAI, CHINA 



Showing a few of the many canals on which the waste of the city is conveyed by boat to 



the farms 



the increase in the tonnage of sugar, 

 bales of cotton, sacks of rice, boxes of 

 oranges, baskets of peaches, and in the 

 trainloads of cabbage, tomatoes, and cel- 

 ery such husbanding would make possi- 

 ble through all time; or number the in- 

 creased millions these could feed and 

 clothe ? 



TEMPORIZING WITH THE FUTURE 



We may prohibit the exportation of 

 our phosphorus, grind our limestone, 

 and apply them to our fields, but this 

 alone is only temporizing with the fu- 

 ture. The more we produce, the more 

 numerous our millions ; the faster must 

 present practices speed the waste to the 

 sea, from whence neither money nor 

 prayer can call them back. 



If the United States is to endure ; if we 

 shall project our history even through 

 4,000 or 5,000 years, as the Mongolian 

 nations have done, and if that history 

 shall be written in continuous peace, free 

 from periods of widespread famine or 



pestilence, this nation must orient itself ; 

 it must square its practices with a con- 

 servation of resources which can make 

 endurance possible. 



Sooner or later we must adopt a na- 

 tional policy which shall more com- 

 pletely conserve our water resources, 

 utilizing them not only for power and 

 transportation, but primarily for the 

 maintenance of ijoil fertility and greater 

 crop production through supplemental 

 irrigation, and all these great national 

 interests should be considered collect- 

 ively, broadly, and with a view to the 

 fullest and best possible coordination. 



China, Korea, and Japan long ago 

 struck the keynote of permanent agri- 

 culture, but the time has now come when 

 they can and will make great improve- 

 ments, and it remains for us and other 

 nations to profit by their experience, to 

 adopt and adapt what is good in their 

 practice, and help in a world movement 

 for the introduction of new and im- 

 proved methods. 



958 



