117 



against injury by chinch-bugs. At these rates the total product of the 

 protected area was 4,764,750 bushels, and the saving by protection was 

 1,191,187 bushels, worth, at 60 cents a bushel, the ordinary price for 

 the season, $714,712. As the cost of protection was $40,500, the net 

 profit for the total operation was $674,212, a ratio of 1665 percent on 

 the investment. 



This result was obtained by making barriers, as a rule, along only 

 one side of infested wheat-fields. If each such field had been wholly 

 surrounded, the expense, of course, would have been four times as 

 great, or approximately $162,000, but the net profit even then would 

 have been 342 percent on the cost of labor and materials. Indeed, if 

 the like had been done by every owner of a badly infested wheat-field 

 in this area, the total profit would have been much increased, since both 

 corn and oats would have been protected, not only against direct in- 

 vasion from infested wheat but against a general infestation follow- 

 ing when the chinch-bugs allowed to escape from the wheat came to 

 maturity and scattered on the wing. These figures show not only the 

 great advantage of wholesale operations against the chinch-bug at har- 

 vest-time, but the essential reasonableness of the requirement that all 

 dangerously infested fields of small grains shall be so handled by their 

 owners that insects shall not escape from them to the injury of the 

 owner himself and of his entire community. I am strongly of the 

 opinion that if we had been in a position to make a requirement of 

 this kind in 1910, and if we had then known all that we have now 

 learned concerning the best methods and materials for use against 

 the chinch-bug at harvest-time, it would have been quite possible so 

 to reduce the numbers of chinch-bugs that year that there would have 

 been no appreciable overflow the following year, and hence no north- 

 ward expansion of the area of infestation. In other words, it seems to 

 me quite possible to throttle a chinch-bug outbreak in this state in the 

 beginning by active scouting in fall and spring to determine its limits 

 and to locate dangerously infested fields, and by well-organized, 

 prompt, general, and concerted action, especially with barriers and 

 lines of post-hole traps around infested fields of small grains, with the 

 addition of insecticide sprays wherever special conditions call for their 

 use. 



The Legislative Remedy 



The statement has been repeatedly made in the foregoing discus- 

 sion that we have found it quite impossible to induce the average farm- 

 er, or even the farmer of the highest grade, to do his best at harvest- 

 time for the destruction of all the chinch-bugs escaping from his fields 

 of wheat ; but unless this is done it will be forever impossible to put a 

 controlling check upon chinch-bug uprisings. The fatal difficulty lies 

 in the fact, obvious to every one, that the individual farmer will not 

 incur the trouble and expense of destroying his chinch-bugs for the 



