i2«Q 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
Hope Farm Notes 
“ FARMERS OF FORTY CENTURIES.” 
Part I. 
The name of Prof. F. H. King is familiar 
to most of our readers. Many have read 
his books, and many more remember the 
strong and readable articles which appeared 
in The K. N.-Y. There was no man in the 
country more capable of presenting the 
truths of farm science so that it held the 
interest like a good story than F. H. King. 
Not long before his sudden death he had 
returned from an extended trip through 
China and Japan. His plan was to write a 
series of books on the intensive agriculture 
as practiced by these Eastern people for 
many centuries. King saw that in the future 
the food supply is to be the great world 
pioblcm. The Chinese are supporting 500,- 
000,000 people chiefly upon the products of 
an area smaller than the improved farm 
lands of the United States. King states 
that inside of a square from Chicago west 
to Kansas and south to the gulf there is an 
area larger than the cultivated fields of 
China, Korea and Japan, and from which 
five times our present population are fed. 
Thus in the future Americans must in some 
way at least follow the plan of these far¬ 
away countries if we are to endure. The 
foundation upon which Chinese farming is 
built is made up of patient economies. They 
have been forced to change their diet- 
using less meat and more vegetable and 
grain food. They save every possible drop 
of water for irrigation and every scrap that 
could be used as plant food or humus. 
Then they study the needs of their soil, 
the crops which will best work together, 
and arrange a good rotation. In his book 
King takes us right into the fields and 
homes and shows us just what these patient 
farmers are doing and how they do it. We 
think it the most notable book on farming 
that has yet appeared, and the most useful 
book of travel that we have read. We 
wish to give in several articles some of the 
interesting features, but every man who 
has a farm or garden should read the en¬ 
tire book. An interesting fact is that it is 
published by Mrs. F. U. King, at Madison, 
Wis. 
The Food Question. —King noticed, as 
all who visit China do, how the people are 
forced to study the food question. Hopkins 
states that ‘'1000 bushels of grain will 
support five times as many people as will 
the meat or milk that can be made from 
it.” When grain and fodder are fed to 
animals part of it is passed into the air 
like fuel in the stove. Part is passed away 
in the excrements and the balance stored 
in the body or bone, meat and hair. Dif¬ 
ferent kinds of live stock distribute this 
food in about the following manner: 
FROM 100 POUNDS DRV MATTER. 
Breath. Excrement. Retained. 
Cattle. 57.3 36.5 6.2 
Sheep . 60.1 31.9 8 
Swine. 65.7 16.7 17.6 
The Chinese, without our farm science, 
but through necessity, learned these things. 
Instead of feeding their grain and hay to 
stock to make meat they eat it themselves 
—thus obtaining its fuel value. They also 
learned that swine give them more flesh 
for the food consumed than other animals. 
Thus they rarely keep cattle or sheep ex¬ 
cept for work or for wool. 
Eating Grass. —You say they eat grain 
and hay. Is not that a mistake? Not en¬ 
tirely, for the Chinese consume much of 
the material we reserve as stock food. They 
eat vast quantities of green rape. The 
green tips are cut off about a foot long. 
King states that on one of the roads lead¬ 
ing into Shanghai he counted in 20 minutes 
50 wheelbarrow-men each with 300 to 500 
liounds of this green rape. The rape is 
boiled or steamed like cabbage or packed 
away in salt. Another plant largely eaten 
is Medicago astragalus, a close relative of 
our Alfalfa. The tips are cut just before 
blooming and boiled or steamed. The stems 
are also cooked. We all know how now 
and then some one starts up to talk about 
Alfalfa as human food. They begin at the 
wrong end by advocating the dried hay. 
The Chinese are centuries ahead of us—but 
they eat the green plant. I have no doubt 
that within 20 years Alfalfa will be freely 
eaten in this country. The Chinese farmer 
seems to get a good share of the consumer’s 
dollar. There are good markets where 
consumer and producer come together. 
Everything is sold by weight and every 
purchaser carries his private pair of scales, 
with all the “nerve” required to use them 
right under the nose of the dealer. 
Science or Instinct. —Even in the selec¬ 
tion of their food the Chinese show that 
Instinct has taught them more than science 
lias taught many of us. By using the ten¬ 
der forms of vegetation they gain in two 
ways. These tender leaves or roots are 
more digestible and with the shorter life of 
the plant before maturity they can grow 
two or three crops in one season—thus ob¬ 
taining an immense growth or yield. King 
speaks of the health and evident strength 
of the Chinese. They perform great feats 
of labor and endurance and seldom if ever 
quarrel. King saw only one fight—a squab¬ 
ble between two children. It seems well 
understood that a diet containing little or 
no meat will give one a strong and enduring 
body, but less of the fighting or dominating 
spirit. The national drink of these people 
is tea. There seems little doubt that this 
came from the desire to give an agreeable 
taste to boiled water. All drinking water 
must be boiled before using—-that is one of 
the penalties which go with the complete 
saving of human wastes as plant food. The 
soil becomes filled with germs and boiling 
drinking water is a necessity. Hot water 
is sold at all public places—the traveler 
carrying his own teapot, tea and cup. 
Self-Heated Beds. —The natural food of 
China is rice, but wheat is also largely 
grown. With the food supply thought out 
the fuel comes next, and many curious and 
pathetic economies are practiced in order 
to save heat. China has supplies of oil 
and coal, but transportation has not made 
them available and every twig or stem 
which can be made to burn is saved. Great 
armies of men march down from the hills 
carrying bundles of brush which in this 
country would be burned to get rid of trash. 
Stems of beans or sunflowers or straw are 
bound up as fuel. If such stems are soft 
enough they are worked into the soil as 
humus. If stiff and hard they are burned, 
and every ounce of the ashes carefully 
saved. And they hang onto the heat to the 
last wave. The Chinese pad out their 
Winter clothing to retain the heat, of the 
body, and have a curious method of bed 
warming. The “kang” is a structure about 
3D inches high and wide enough for a bed. 
It is built of porous brick—clay well mixed 
with straw. This kang is connected with 
the family stove or fireplace. Thus, during 
the day the heat from the fire passes 
through the kang. The porous bricks ab¬ 
sorb the heat, and at night the bed is 
spread on the top of the kang and the 
sleeper is cosy and warm. Thus the heat 
which in our country goes rushing away up 
the chimney is held by the kang and made 
useful. And even when this economy is 
finished the end has not come. After sev¬ 
eral years’ service these porous bricks have 
absorbed from the smoke and vapor consid¬ 
erable plant food. The heat too has made 
the clay of the bricks somewhat more avail¬ 
able as plant food. Of course we know how 
sulphate of ammonia is recovered from gas 
and smoke from factory chimneys and how 
soot is used as a fertilizer. Now this kang 
besides saving the heat, absorbs the plant 
food from the household fires. After a few 
years the kang is taken down, the bricks 
are crushed and the powder used for making 
a compost! It will be hard to beat this 
scheme of sleeping on a warm brick and 
then grinding up your bed for fertilizer, yet 
this is a fair sample of the ingenious econo¬ 
mies practiced by the Chinese. No one ex¬ 
pects the average American to sleep on the 
soft side of a brick, but sooner or later 
we must all face the fearful problem of 
saving wastes. 
Saving. Water.— I would like to take up 
some of the Chinese farm economies in order 
—water, plant food, the soil, cropping. 
Water comes first, for it is at the base of 
the whole thing. During the past few years 
thousands of Americans on naturally good 
soil and with fair quantities of manure and 
IF THE CHINESE WERE HERE. 
fertilizers have failed through lack of water. 
The entire year’s rainfall may have been 
up to the average, but there was no water 
just when the crops needed it. In one of 
our American homes the family might have 
fuel enough to make a roaring fire for din¬ 
ner and then go shivering to bed for lack 
of heat. We have seen how the Chinese 
overcome this with their “kang,” and they 
handle the water problem in much the same 
way. This is done by holding the water 
which would run uselessly away in Winter 
or Spring in ponds or canals where it may 
be used as wanted. China is a network of 
canals, which serve not only for transpor¬ 
tation, but for watering the land. Our 
New York farmers justly condemn the way 
in which the Erie Canal has been forced 
upon them. If its water could be used for 
irrigation after the manner of the Chinese 
the strip along that canal would become the 
richest on this continent. The annual rain¬ 
fall in China will average larger than ours, 
yet were it not for their system of water 
storage for use in case of drought, famine 
would drive multitudes of the Chinese into 
their graves. On page 274 we may get a 
little idea of what such water storage 
means. Mr. Stubenraucli of Texas, by 
means of his pond, made a desert into a 
garden. In a way that is what the Chinese 
have done with an empire. King says 
that if the Mongolian race had developed 
in North America as well as in Asia there 
might have been a set of canals here with 
main streams somewhat like those shown 
in the map which is taken from this book, 
see above. These are the main canals which 
would have held the run-off water , with all 
the plant food and deposits which it washed 
out of the hills. It would have formed 
interior waterways and from it would have 
run thousands of small canals and streams 
carrying the water to thousands of acres. 
This would have been a mighty undertaking, 
but the Chinese have carried out larger 
ones in their own country. One can easily 
see how such canals would have held back 
the water which now rushes to the sea in 
late Winter and Spring. Florida in particu¬ 
lar would have been made over by such 
water storage. h. w. c. 
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