20 HARNESSING THE EARTHWORM 



toys which science and invention have provided and uniting in a 

 mighty cry and cosmic bawl for food. 



Let the flow of food to the cities stop for a single day, and 

 its cessation is headline news. Let the flow stop for two days, 

 and it becomes tragedy of major proportions. Let it stop for a 

 week, and panic seizes the people as starvation takes hold. 



In checking over the annual requisition of the human family 

 for food and supplies, we are staggered by such items as these: 

 Rush the harvest of 4,954,000,000 bushels of wheat, and prepare 

 366,000,000 acres of land for replanting. Husk 4,9142,000,000 

 bushels of corn and prepare 209,100,000 acres of land for re- 

 planting. Round up 182,365,000 head of cattle for beef and but- 

 ter, milk and shoes. Ship 38,159,000 bales of cotton to the fac- 

 tories, with 3,692,000,000 pounds of wool, that we may be clothed 

 and kept warm. And in the United States, where we are pecu- 

 liarly peanut-conscious, we find a small item of 1,291,655,000 

 pounds of peanuts ; also a citrus -fruit item of 67,067,000 boxes. 



In the annual Year Book of the United States Department 

 of Agricultural Statistics, several hundred pages of fine print are 

 required to tabulate and report on the annual food crops of the 

 United States and the world. We have mentioned a few of the 

 major items that are included in the annual demands of the hu- 

 man family for food and clothing. We have briefly indicated the 

 size of the order to call attention to the fact that ^the^basic^source 

 of all these materials is humus, the immediately usable supply of 

 which is concentrated in the eighteen-inch surface crust of the 

 earth and in the more favored and very limited areas of the globe. 

 And humus is not found in inexhaustible mines below the sur- 

 face of the earth in the better soils it diminishes almost to th 

 vanishing point at a depth of thirty-six inches. It is there 

 tentially, just as food is potentially present in the crude elements 

 of the earth. 



JHumus is the end product of plant and animal life and must 

 be created for current use from day to day and season to season. 

 In the cycle of nature, the available material must be used over 



