138 



THIRTY-FOURTH FRUIT-GROWERS^ CONVENTION. 



woman that has a dyspeptic husband. God help the orchardist that 

 has got a dyspeptic soil. And lots of you have got it. You have made 

 the stomach sick. The soil, as much as man, must be physically right. 

 AVhy, it hris, ^ot to be so open that the air can get into it, that the 

 bacterial life may live and thrive and digest the food that is in it, and 

 the food that you put into it. Therefore, the physical life of the soil 

 must be right. It must be porous enough ; heavy soil opened up with 

 humus making material; light soils closed, too. with the same material, 

 that the moisture conditions may be right; that you don't pour the 

 water on and it runs off through the soil, or the summer winds rush 

 through the soil like the winter winds used to sing around the corner of 

 your father's house. An open soil lets the air rush through and away 

 the moisture goes. You have got to have your soil so that you can hold 

 the moisture, and that that uniform condition that ]\Ir. Smith brought 

 so clearly before you is attained. 



I can show you in a ten-minute ride in my automobile where one is 

 ruinously affected in two weeks after an irrigation; the other is never 

 affected until eight weeks will expire, so that it is not pouring water 

 on and taking it off. 



Now, to keep the physical condition, get your humus and get your 

 cultivator and use it, and use less water. IMore cultivator, less water. 

 The cultivator is well said to be irrigation, cultivation, fertilization. 

 Irrigation, hold what you put in and what the Lord put there from the 

 heavens, which is worth more to you than what you put on through the 

 ditch. Cultivation opens up the soil and lets the air go in to keep 

 bacteria, and lets the noxious gases escape, as we open our windows to 

 get the free air that we may live more healthy. Irrigation, cultivation, 

 fertilization. Every cultivation you give your soil makes more plant 

 food available ten times over than the cost of the work. Have you 

 teams standing in the stable? Put them to work. Pay the man you 

 have got. and feed the team. Pay the man day after day and day after 

 day, that he may make our .soil physically fit. Exercise it. It is the 

 same as dumb-bells, as the rowing machine, as the football, the basket- 

 ball, to the human soul, the tabernacle, this plain thing that we walk 

 around in — we have got to keep it right so that we will be well. 

 (Applause.) 



Now, I will close, unless yon have some questions. Again, let me say 

 more than anything else, the key to the proper relation between the 

 soil, with these elements in it, and the fruit which we are so hungry to 

 see on our trees that we may get the money that we may make our wives 

 and our children more comfortable — to get these you must be phys- 

 ically fit. Let me give you an illustration. There is a giant among men 

 over yonder in Washington, physically fit. mentally fit. spiritually fit. 

 with a soul so big that he can take all his fellows in. But look at the 

 machine with which he hits so and melds the stick that brings salva- 

 tion to the land. (Applause.) That is the thing we are after. We want 

 a Rooseveltian soil, physically strong, physically fit to do a great work 

 for you and for all. The more, the richer in plant food, the richer in 

 physical life of the soil, the greater the income it will give you. 



As an illustration, a gentleman who was here yesterday came to 

 me a little over a year ago. I talked with him an hour about the 



