a state scale only. On a state scale, truly, but not on a small scale
by any means. From El Paso to Texarkana the distance is almost exactly
that from New York to Chicago, and from Brownsville to Texline is as
far as from Kansas City to Winnipeg. Moreover, Texas has most of the
problems which confront the Nation itself in working out a national
system of rate-making—a coast well settled and old in development with
all the wealth and power that the conditions imply—a hinterland ranging
in conditions from fine farming land like that of Iowa, through semi-arid
to desert. The Texas rate system may not be the last word in rate-making,
and probably is not; but it seems to work well, and is certainly worth
study. As will be seen at a glance, it is a modification of the systems
of tapering rates suggested above—in which rates taper to a point where
a maximum is reached, and then cease to increase at all. It is also a
modification of the zone system in effect on certain foreign railways,
under which within certain territorial limits railway rates are flat,
like postage. The economic basis for such rates lies in considerations of
national welfare, coupled with the well-known transportation principle
that the terminal charge which makes up so large a portion of most
shipments, is the same for a long haul as a short one.
THE DECLINE OF NEW ENGLAND AGRICULTURE.
For purposes relating to the fostering of such interests as seemed
necessary to the welfare of New England and New England’s tonnage, the
railroads have themselves put in effect with reference to that section
a system of rates which in some ways resembles the zone system of
Europe, or the maximum distance tariff of Texas. Cut off by the tariff
on imports from her natural hinterland, Canada, the decline of New
England’s agriculture under the competition of the prairie lands would
have brought to her a permanent industrial decline, had she not turned
her attention to manufacturing. And even as to that, she was placed
at a disadvantage as soon as the development of the Middle States and
Middle West brought that great region to the manufacturing stage. For New
England’s manufactures had to go to market through New York, and most of
her raw materials had to be imported from the West and the South. The
railways used their powers of rulership in the interests of this whole
group of states, as they are constantly doing in the case of cities—they
decreed prosperity to New England’s manufacturers through a rate system.
They made of New England a flat-rate zone for raw materials, with the
same rate to all points, and practically the same as the rate to New
York. This applies to all raw materials coming from west of a line drawn
from Buffalo to Pittsburg through Wheeling. For out-going shipments,
they gave all New England points a flat uniform rate to all points west
of a line drawn from Cleveland to the Ohio river. That the wage earners
of New England might be favored in cost of living—a feature reflected in
low wages—the food products from the West are given a rate practically
the same as that to New York—and thus the ruin of the old New England
agriculture, already probable, was made certain. Had it not been for
these imperial measures, New England’s headship in manufacturing would
have been lost, first to the Middle States, and then, perhaps, to the
Middle West. The expedient differs from the Texas system in the fact that
it is applied partially and in the interests of manufactures, with New
York as a center, while the Texas system is applied for the purpose of
decentralizing business by making every shipping point the center of its
own flat-rate zone.
But the most striking illustration of the power of the railroads to
foster or to blight industry, lies perhaps after all in the field
of agriculture. And it so happens that it is also the instance of
the application on the broadest scale of the zone principle in which
all rates are the same to all points within certain territorial
limits. I refer to the rate structure which has been built up for the
transportation of the citrus and other fruits and vegetables of the
Pacific coast and the Pacific Northwest to the markets of the eastern
half of the continent. While the principle is applied with more or
less completeness to shipments of deciduous fruits and truck, it is
best studied in its relation to citrus fruits. Oranges and lemons go
to all points east of Denver at a flat rate. From Cheyenne, Wyoming,
to Eastport, Maine, the rate on citrus fruit is the same. The effect
has been most beneficial to the agriculture of the Western quarter of
the United States, to the people at large, and to the railways. Whether
or not the rates are just, the principle upon which they are made is
conducive to the development of agriculture and is, perhaps, essential
to such development, when the industry is hampered by land carriage over
great distances. And nothing need be said in addition to citing these
instances of the determinative effects of our railway rates on the course
of prosperity, in spite of the averages which seem to show the economic
unimportance of rates.
SOIL DEPLETION.
Thus far, I have discussed the influence of railroad policies upon the
farmer as a man engaged in one of the many industries which make up
the sum of industrial activities. But there are certain respects in
which the farmer represents the everlasting welfare of the race, and
certain demands which he may legitimately make on the transportation
agencies of the land which are based on every man’s heritage in the
soil, and interest in its continued fertility. The depletion of the soil
by cropping is largely accomplished through transportation, and its
restoration to fertility must be accomplished, where such restoration is
necessary, in large measure, through the same agencies.
The soil is a reservoir of plant food. Most of the dozen or so elements
used by plants in building themselves up from the soil are found in
it in such great abundance that we need take little care for their
conservation. Only three—or possibly four—are so scarce as to call for
anxiety. These three are nitrogen, potash and phosphorus.
Potash is ordinarily found in soils in such quantities as to render its
application unnecessary and yet there exist localities in almost every
state where a marked poverty exists in this element. Peaty soils are
always deficient in potash, and as the swamps of the Nation are drained
the potash problem will grow in importance. Commercial potash is mostly
imported from Germany, where the government’s conservation measures have
already brought its export into the field of somewhat vexing diplomacy.
The German supply would seem adequate for the world’s demands for many
centuries. The deposit underlies more than a million acres, and in the
Strassfurt district, where it was discovered some fifty years ago,
the total thickness of the potassium-bearing strata amounts to the
astonishing depth of 5,000 feet. It is estimated that this wonderful
supply at the present rate of mining will last 190,000 years. It should
be remembered, however, that reclamation activities are likely more and
more to be directed to swamps as the arid regions are brought under
irrigation, and that the drain on the German potash deposits is likely to
increase in a geometrical ratio. Our Government does well, therefore, to
push diligently the search for potash deposits at home, which it is doing
with some prospects of success. In any case, we are not dependent on the
German deposits as an ultimate fact; for the waters of the sea are the
source from which these great deposits originally came, and there seems
no reason to doubt the ultimate feasibility of obtaining potash for all
future time from that inexhaustible source, if the geological deposits
fail or are denied us. But the matter of getting potash to the land, from
whatever source it comes, is a railroad problem in most cases.
IMPORTING FERTILIZERS.
Since the guano deposits of the Pacific islands, and the nitrate deposits
of Chili were opened to the agriculture of the world, the carriage
of nitrogen to the soil has been a great transportation feature. For
nitrogen is often the limiting element in the soil. It exists in the
earth in small quantities only, and though all cultivated plants are
bathed in a limitless sea of it in the atmosphere, they have not the
power of using any except that which is fixed in the soil. They starve
for nitrogen, while blown about by winds filled with it. Not all plants,
however, are so helpless in the matter of taking nitrogen from the air.
The plants grown as crops are utterly unable to help themselves to the
plentiful atmospheric supply, but certain minute plants called bacteria
have the power denied to those of higher organization, and it is certain
that almost all of the fixed nitrogen in the earth’s crust, in the guano
beds, in the nitrate deposits of Chili and elsewhere, has been taken from
the air by these bacteria, aided perhaps by certain fungi which grow
about the roots of plants like the oak, and by the negligible fixation
of nitrogen by lightning. These bacteria are coöperators with certain
plants of the bean family—clovers, alfalfa, vetches, sweet clover, beans,
peas, velvet beans, cowpeas and the like. The microscopic plants grow on
the roots of these legumes—and to some extent free, or associated with
non-leguminous plants—on the basis of mutual aid. The bacteria reach out
into the soil and fix nitrogen for the legumes, and the legumes furnish
a host on which the bacteria live, just as we furnish a host for the
bacteria of disease. And when a crop of any legume is plowed down into
the soil, it is found to have added to the land nitrates to the value,
sometimes, of more than twenty-five dollars per acre. Thus by setting in
motion the forces of nature, the farmer may draw nitrogen from the very
heavens above his farm, without money and without price. This is perhaps
the most vital agricultural discovery of the ages.
But how, you may say, is the nitrogen supply a matter of concern to the
railroads, if nitrates may be drawn from the air? Unfortunately, there is
work for them to do in assisting the farmer to adapt conditions in his
soil to the needs of these bacteria. For some reasons, the bacteria of
the clovers and their leguminous cousins will not do well in a soil that
is acid; and soils tend to become acid through cultivation. Acidity is
the bane of the older farms of the United States. When acid phosphates
are applied for the purpose of furnishing phosphorus to the crops, the
very process of fertilization tends to produce acidity. Most of the
prairie soils were originally alkaline, and finely adapted to the growth
of the favoring bacteria of the legumes, but plants that thrive on acid
soils—especially the sorrel—are appearing in the prairie states of the
Mississippi Valley, and wherever they appear, clovers cease to thrive.
THE VALUE OF LIME.
Nature’s remedy for acidity in the soil is lime. The basis of the great
alfalfa industry in the West and Southwest is the high percentage of lime
in the arid soils, which have retained this precious element through
that very dryness which, until irrigation redeemed it, made some of it a
desert. Now lime is needed over a great part of the United States east of
the Mississippi. Even where the soil is of limestone origin, it may have
become acid by the dissolving of the lime out of the surface soil. In
Wisconsin a great area of otherwise good land has been found to be acid,
though a stratum of limestone lies only a few feet below the grass roots.
The abandoned farms of New England need lime. The old farms of New York
and Pennsylvania, and all the South, need lime. Wherever the legumes
fail to arrive, lime is a prime need. Carbonate of lime is the basis
of legume culture, and successful agriculture everywhere—in China, in
Japan, in India, in the highly cultivated nations of Europe—is based on
leguminous crops. The supply of nitrogen to these states of ours in which
agriculture has languished must be restored through lime in the soil and
rotations in which legumes shall have large part. And the supply of lime
is essentially a transportation question.
Lime is one of the most plentiful of the elements necessary to
agriculture. Its application to the land has in some periods achieved
such bad repute that there is a maxim among farmers that lime makes
the children rich but the grandchildren poor. The evils referred to,
however, arise, I believe, from the application of caustic lime, and are
not necessary to the use of lime. It has now been determined, I believe
it is safe to say, that raw ground limestone is the best form of lime
in which it can be given to the soil. It may be applied in any amount
without injury. If raw ground limestone could be spread an inch deep over
the farms east of the Mississippi (and in many localities west of it)
it would bring about a condition which would soon swamp the railroads
with tonnage; and while there are some favored soils to which it would
do no good, it would nowhere do any harm. It would put the East on a
parity with the alfalfa lands of the West in the matter of the production
of legumes, and would bring hope to the discouraged farmers who strive
against the obscure evils of increasing soil acidity.
Limestone occurs along the lines of every railway. It is almost as common
and cheap as gravel. It can be ground cheaply, and cheaply shipped. It
should be furnished to the farms at gravel prices. Burned lime is sold at
almost prohibitive prices, and thousands of farmers who know their needs
are deterred from satisfying them because of poverty. This is a problem
which enlightened statesmanship should solve in the interests of the
Nation, and one to the solution of which a railroad system operated in
the interests of the national welfare would surely address itself.
PHOSPHORUS.
Phosphorus is the element which is perhaps most commonly lacking when
a soil is infertile. A good soil should contain not less than 2,000
pounds of it in the top foot of ground. Many so-called exhausted soils
are reduced to less than a sixth of this amount. A crop of corn of a
hundred bushels to the acre takes from the soil of each acre twenty-three
pounds of phosphorus; a fifty-bushel wheat crop takes sixteen pounds,
a two-bale cotton crop takes thirty pounds, and other crops in like
manner subtract from the phosphorus supply. Only about one per cent of
the supply is available to the crop of any one year—that is, in their
hunt for phosphorus the rootlets are unable to find more than one atom
in a hundred. Thus we see that a good soil provided with 2,000 pounds
of phosphorus to the acre within reach of the roots cannot produce a
100-bushel crop of corn. Such a crop must have twenty-three pounds of
phosphorus, and the roots can find only twenty—and the next year the
supply will be reduced to 1,980 pounds, and the roots will be able
to find but nineteen and eight-tenths per cent of phosphorus for the
dwindling crop. The 2,000 pounds of phosphorus would be quite adequate
to the needs of the fifty-bushel wheat crop, but it would fall short
by one-third of meeting the demands of the two-bale cotton crop. As so
of all crops. They draw on the supply of a limiting element, and as
successive croppings reduce this supply, the crop falls off until we have
the four-bushel wheat crop, the ten-bushel corn crop, the third-of-a-bale
cotton crop, which marks the ruin of the farmer—and the railway.
There is no way to supply phosphorus to the soil save by carrying it upon
the land and applying it. It is not found, like nitrogen in the air. It
may be brought back in manure and the bones of slaughtered animals, and
the process of depletion retarded, but this game is inevitably a losing
one like those gambling games in which there is always a percentage in
favor of the house. The fertility flushed into the waters of the earth
through sewers, the waste of manure, the leaching of soil by rains—all
these are the percentages in favor of the house, and against the players.
The players are we—the human race—and the house is the massed forces
of nature. There seems to be no way to play this game of life without
losing. If the earth ever becomes unable to sustain human life, there is
good reason to believe that our doom will reach us through failure of the
supply of phosphorus in the soil.
There is no phosphorus in the air, and in the waters the supply is
negligible. It is an element, and until we discover the secret of the
transmutation of elements we cannot make it. As it disappears from the
soil there is no source of replenishment of the supply, except in the
phosphate rocks of the earth. And while the failure of the soil to give
its increase, and the depopulation of the earth through the exhaustion of
this element of plant food may seem remote and speculative, the necessity
of transporting the phosphate rocks from the quarries to the farms is
an actual and present one. And it is a matter which lies within the
relations between the railroads and the farmers.
PHOSPHATE RESOURCES.
Fortunately for the permanent agriculture of the United States, the
largest known deposits of phosphorus in nature are within her boundaries.
Guano, which is merely the manure accumulated on rainless islands where
seabirds congregate, is of very limited importance in the long run,
though for so long the source from which most of the world’s commercial
phosphates were derived. The phosphate rocks of the world are, so far as
known, preponderantly in the United States. All the phosphate rock now
mined, I believe, comes from the three states of South Carolina, Florida
and Tennessee—whence the rock is now shipped at a rate which will exhaust
them about the year 1930. On three Pacific islands are known deposits of
high grade rock of about the same amount as that still remaining unmined
in these three states—about 60,000,000 tons in each case. These rocks
contain from sixty to eighty per cent of calcium phosphate. As they
fall off in output, and the need for phosphorus becomes more bitter,
the farmers must use rock of lower and lower grade, and the task of
transporting it will become proportionately greater.
Indeed, the task of transportation will begin to increase long before
it becomes necessary to resort to the low grade rock. For far from the
depleted lands, in Utah, Idaho and Wyoming, are the greatest high grade
phosphate beds in the world—something like half a billion tons of rock
practically in sight (according to Van Hise), and averaging over seventy
per cent tricalcium phosphate. The existence of these great deposits,
and of the low grade beds known to exist elsewhere, together with the
probability that other beds will be discovered, justifies the highest
optimism as to the future of agriculture—if transportation facilities
can be afforded which will place the phosphates on the ground on terms
tolerable to the farmers and profitable to them. This is a railway
problem. As a mere matter of tonnage it is potentially greater than any
other transportation item, save the one of supplying the fields with lime.
At present this sole supply of available phosphate rock is being carried
off to Europe as fast as the mills can grind and the railways carry it to
the ships. Nothing is being done to conserve the supply, so far as I am
aware, in emulation of Germany’s statesmanship in conserving her potash
beds. It would be unfair to blame the railways which only act as common
carriers in these shipments. But it might not be too much to expect of
the patriotism of the men who have these great interests in hand to ask
them to reverse the policy which they have adopted as to many other
commodities, and to make higher rates for export on phosphate rock than
for home consumption. The real remedy for the drain of phosphorus lies,
of course, with the Government. We are forbidden by the Constitution to
stop shipments abroad by means of an export duty, but we have the right
to stop exports entirely, or to limit them. Our ethical right to refuse
to divide the phosphate treasures with the needy agriculture of the world
may be open to question; but we might surely demand that the foreign
deposits be worked first for the foreign demand. The shipment of our
phosphates abroad, with the certainty confronting us that at some future
time we shall have to re-import the same commodity, involves an economic
waste to which the world should not be subjected. And the railroads
ought, in their own interests, to adopt every policy legally open to them
to keep the phosphate rock for the use of the farms within their own
transportation territory.
RATES AND FERTILIZERS.
It has just been suggested that the railways might discriminate in
their rates on fertilizers, in favor of the home market, and against
the foreign. Most railway men are probably unaware of the extent to
which they are contributing to the exhaustion of our soils by their
discrimination against the American milling of American grains and in
favor of the export of the whole grains instead of the milled product.
For generations we have had a tariff on wheat, ostensibly for the
protection of the American farmer; and all the time the railways have
made rates for export wheat lower than for domestic milling. Flour is
largely denied the benefits of water transportation on the lakes, in
part because it must go to market over the docks which are to a greater
and greater degree controlled by the railways, while the great elevator
companies with their terminal houses standing at the water’s edge, and
many of them provided with their own lines of boats, send wheat and
other grains to tide water so cheaply as to make the shipment of flour
a thing practically under the control of themselves and of the railways
with which they have been traditionally closely affiliated in business
interest. The result has been that, while there are mills enough in
America to grind all our grain, most of our exports go unground.
This will be intolerable to public opinion when once enlightened upon
the subject. The export of flour, of course, constitutes a drain
of fertility; but the phosphorus content of the grain is largely
concentrated in the bran and shorts. In the bran of every bushel of wheat
exported goes phosphorus in its most readily available form of the value,
at the ordinary rates paid by farmers for phosphates, of from twenty-five
to thirty cents. A system of transportation based on considerations of
national welfare would sedulously seek to retain that fertility for our
depleted farms. Where grain is milled there grows up a large local use
for bran, shorts and middlings—the by-products of milling. These are used
in the feeding of dairy cattle and other live stock, furnishing what is
needed in animal nutrition to balance the corn ration. Farms to which
they are carried for feeding increase in fertility. The fertility of the
prairie states has been sapped by fifty years of grain shipments. This
era should be succeeded by the golden age of American milling. The wheat
fields of Canada stand ready to send us fertility to replace that which
we have shipped to Europe; and our transportation system should be used
to the end that it should be retained here. The Hudson Bay basin would
thus, during its period of soil exploitation, return to the Mississippi
Valley what we have sent to the hungry soils of the old world.
RAILROADS AND POPULATION.
The existence of overgrown cities is to a large extent attributable
to the policies of the railroads with reference to them. The Texas
system has, I believe, shown the power of transportation influences to
decentralize population, just as the history of Chicago, Kansas City,
the Twin Cities, New York and almost every large city proves their power
in the direction of centralization. As a farming factor, the large city
is a drain on fertility. These great towns are flushing out through
their sewers the goodness of the Nation’s farms. In the carriage of
lime, phosphates, potash, cottonseed meal, bone meal, and of all the
fertilizers of commerce, the railways as national tools of right living
should be used to restore to the lands the fertility of which they have
inevitably, in some instances, mistakenly in others, deprived them. But
in considering the so-called commercial fertilizers, the coarser manures
should not be forgotten. The enormous waste of manure about the great
cities should be stopped. A German farmer of my acquaintance told me the
other day that he had never sold a load of hay or straw from his farm
in all his life. “Often,” said he, “I have had more than I needed, but
I have held it over, even when the price was high and I needed money.
It seemed to me as if that hay and straw didn’t belong to me, but to
the farm.” Under the renting customs of many British and other European
localities the tenant agrees that whenever he hauls hay or straw to
market he will haul back to the farm an equal quantity of manure.