60 
THIRTEENTH REPORT. 
the operation of crystallizing cane sugar, practically pure, in the mill 
is a commonplace of the industry, but can not be accomplished on a 
laboratory scale. I have recently been assured by one of the most skill- 
ful metallurgists in this country that certain methods which he had 
studied for years in the laboratory only to find that they “would not 
work" although theoretically sound, were found to be very easy of ac- 
complishment and remarkably efficient when he finally had the courage 
to try them in actual smelter runs. These facts indicate that in soil 
management, actual performance is yet very far behind what we have a 
right to expect. But more than that, the yields obtained in artificial 
cultures, so far from showing what the maximum possibilities are, should 
rather be regarded as indicating the inferior limit allowable in actual 
practice. This view may seem revolutionary to some, and it would be, 
if we are to look forward to an indefinite continuance of farming by 
present methods. But actual examples of sustained yields of high 
quantity in such special crops as truck, tobacco, etc., show that the 
possibilities have not yet been realized and that with the development 
of the future, present results will look woefully inadequate. It is but 
a few generations since the physician was regarded as a sort of lower 
servant who practiced with approbation crudities that today would land 
him in the madhouse; today he performs as ordinary incidents of the 
day's routine operations that were not impossible but undreamed 
of a half century ago, and his position in the community is not surpassed 
in the homage and respect it commands. The profession of engineering 
of today has developed from equally humble origin and other examples 
will occur to every one. It is not so long since the farmer was a serf, 
but there are many reasons to believe that soil management is developing 
in a similar way to medicine, law, engineering, etc., as witnessed by the 
existence of such institutions as the one in whose halls we are now met, 
and by the fact that it commands the gathering in conclave of trained 
investigators in such diverse inquiries as have been brought before us 
today. The view is not revolutionary, but will, I am sure, appeal to you 
as entirely logical, and that if the technical investigators do well their 
part, the farmer of the not distant future will uot be behind the smelter 
superintendent or the up-to-date manager of the factory. 
Soil management is for the production of the crop and the crop is made 
up of plants. The modern crop plant is already a highly artificialized 
entity. It is not reasonable to expect the co-ed graduate of Michigan's 
higher seats of learning, however satisfactory and beyond criticisms she 
may be in her native environment, to make a satisfactory wife to the 
roving Hottentot or the nomadic Esquimau. Just as reasonable is it to 
expect a highly bred strain of wheat to fare well on a soil and under 
management that would discourage a jimson weed. It is not a question 
of food; your Esquimau eats more than your college athlete, and gets 
it when his civilized compeer with all his modern equipment would 
starve, yet the Esquimau is inferior in production either of physical or 
mental output. Our soil management must be developed with this 
thought constantly in mind that the organisms for whose production the 
management is practiced is highly artificialized and cannot maintain 
itself successfully without continual supervision and aid. It is not sur- 
prising therefore that the soil must be artificialized to some extent for 
the best production of the artificialized plants. The thoroughly tilled 
