speak, I not only should have had to abandon all thought of
doing anything else, and have become practically an itinerant
giver of free lectures, but what would be much more serious, I
should have lost all weight and power to do good to any cause
and this purely by yielding to the demand of good men who wish
me to speak for good causes. If I stop at all I have to stop
entirely—at least for the time being. Now I hate to have to
answer you in this way. If you will come on here to New York
and give me the chance to have the talk with you that I would
so like to have, I will show you a mass of correspondence which
I am sure will make you realize that I cannot answer in any
other way than I am now answering. I am very sorry.
Very sincerely yours,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
Chairman COBURN—The next number on this program is by Mr. A. P. Grout, of
Illinois, representing the National Soil Fertility League, who will talk
to you on “The Rape of the Soil.” I may say in passing that Mr. Grout is
one of the biggest farmers in Illinois, and this is he. (Applause)
Mr. GROUT—Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: I am to speak for a few
minutes upon a subject or condition that has been developed in the soil
management of this country. I speak to you as a farmer, one who has not
only had experience as a farmer, but who must plead guilty to the charge
of having been, in the no distant past, no better than the rest, for a
due regard for truth compels me to admit that I have been something of a
soil robber myself. In the course of time my connection and familiarity
with the work of the Illinois College of Agriculture, the Illinois
Farmers’ Institute, and the constant reading of Wallace’s Farmer and
other good agricultural papers, awakened and brought me to a realization
of some of the facts or truths regarding soil fertility.
One of my first attempts at reform was with a tenant to whom I had
rented a farm, for cash rent, for fifteen years, with full license to
manage and farm as he pleased. On the occasion of the renewal of the
lease after my awakening, I suggested that I have a part in directing
how the land should be farmed, with a view of making a start toward a
better conservation of the soil. One of the first things I mentioned was
that the straw be put back upon the land and not burned as had been the
practice. I was very emphatically informed by the tenant that he would
not scatter straw on the land for any man, and so far as I know he kept
his word. He is no longer my tenant, for having once been converted to
the reform soil conservation movement I had no idea of turning back. From
my own experience in farming and from a longer experience in renting
lands and in watching the methods of many farmers and the results they
obtained, I have formed some very positive opinions in regard to the
subject of soil treatment.
The maintenance and increase of the fertility of the soil is paramount to
all other industrial problems, and upon our ability to solve this problem
and the extent to which corrections can be made in the present ruinous
and destructive methods of soil management, depend the future prosperity
and welfare of the Nation.
No country in the world has been so favored in those natural conditions
and resources which are necessary for the maintenance of an independent
and prosperous people. This wonderful heritage has been bequeathed to
us, not to dissipate and destroy, but to use and enjoy and transmit
unimpaired to our successors.
We are tenants in possession of this vast estate, but the obligation to
maintain to the end of our tenancy in as good condition as when entered
upon has been given little or no consideration, but has been recklessly
disregarded.
We view with alarm the advent of the time when what remains of the
forests, the coal, the iron and other valuable minerals and utilities
shall become exhausted or come into the possession of purely selfish
interests.
THE FUTURE AND ITS NEEDS.
We are solicitous not only regarding our own present wants, but are
beginning to think of the future and of the results that will accrue to
coming generations.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the conservation of our natural
resources has aroused a deep and widespread interest, but the great
and most important and far-reaching of all our resources, namely, the
fertility of the soil, is the last to receive recognition. While the
situation regarding this most important resource, the very foundation
upon which is based our national prosperity, is most alarming and fraught
with great danger and disastrous results, it is not a new development,
but is as old as the hills. It is the culmination of the customs and
practices handed down to us from the earliest settlement of the country.
The attempt of a few men to monopolize and profit by the undeveloped
resources of the country is an unimportant and trifling matter compared
with the wanton depredations of thousands and tens of thousands of soil
robbers in every part of the broad domain who are madly striving to mine
and forever remove from the soil those natural deposits without which our
once rich and fertile lands must become a barren waste.
We are now reaping the legitimate harvest of blindly and persistently
following the traditional methods handed down from father to son.
Traditions and practices based upon no scientific knowledge, but founded
upon the belief that all of agriculture, all of the necessary knowledge
and wisdom for its successful practice, is vouchsafed only to him who
drives the team and follows the plow.
The fertility of the soil, the most important and valuable asset of this
or any other country, is being dissipated, squandered, stolen and carried
away to an extent that calls for serious and thoughtful consideration.
It is not an easy matter to discover or to frame an excuse for the
dissipation of the thing that is now, and ever has been, the foundation
of all our prosperity and upon which we are absolutely dependent for food
and clothing as well as the comforts and luxuries of life. Perhaps the
most charitable view of the situation is to attribute it to ignorance,
to a lack of scientific agricultural knowledge, or to the fact that
those who have classed themselves as farmers have been attempting to do
business with little or no fundamental knowledge of the business in which
they are engaged, and may be denominated only as “near farmers.”
Surely it never was contemplated in the great plan of the universe that
the provisions for the support and maintenance of millions of inhabitants
should be gradually diminished until starvation and destitution are the
ultimate end.
THE WASTE OF RAW MATERIAL.
Science has come to the rescue and demonstrates that the enormous waste
and destruction of raw material, of the elements which go to make up what
we denominate soil fertility and which should continue unimpaired for the
benefit of future generations, is not only unnecessary but fundamentally
and perniciously wrong. Who are the conspirators in this wholesale
robbery, which sooner or later must result in national calamity? Contrary
to every business principle and to every known law of compensation, and
almost without exception, every land owner, whether he be a farmer, a
banker, a professional or business man, all have been imbued with the
idea that the soil is an inexhaustible asset from which they can continue
to draw indefinitely and without replenishment.
The banker is accustomed to look upon the ownership of land as a
safe investment, and if he can rent it and make a fair per cent on
his original investment he is content and takes no thought of any
encroachment that may be made by the tenant farmer upon his principle,
upon that which constitutes the real value of his land.
The same is true of most business and professional men who own farms.
They do not appreciate or understand that every crop requires that
certain essential elements must be in the soil for its growth and
development, and that the removal of each crop takes away a certain
amount of those elements, and the future productive capacity of their
farms are thereby lessened. As a rule these men do not profess to have
very much knowledge either of the art or science of agriculture, but they
are guided in the management of their farms by the methods and customs of
those who claim to be farmers and make farming their business.
They are led to do this on the presumption that the farmers know and
understand the business of farming just as thoroughly and completely
as the business man knows his specialty. They have overlooked the fact
of the old prevailing idea that education, preparation, and even very
much ability, is not only unnecessary, but a positive detriment to the
business of farming.
The renting of land has, by long usage and practice, been construed as a
license to rob and pillage without fear or hindrance.
The problem at this time is to combat the customs of long standing
and introduce sane and scientific methods of farm management and
soil treatment. The real offenders in this great wholesale scheme of
soil robbery and dissipation are the farmers themselves. The men who
are supposed to possess a thorough knowledge and understanding of
the business of farming and who, above everything else, should most
scrupulously guard, preserve and protect the thing that denominates
and is the unquestioned and absolute measure of their success. When
we judge of their qualifications as farmers by showing they have
made in permitting the farms intrusted to them to deteriorate in
productive power, the true situation reveals itself. There is no use in
sugar-coating the situation. These men are not farmers, but soil robbers.
I speak as a farmer or I would not dare to make such a statement. We
have mined and shipped away the valuable constituents of the soil until
its productive capacity has been, in a comparatively few years, reduced
far below that of many European countries that have been farmed for a
thousand years.
THE BUSINESS OF FARMING.
What further proof is wanted that there is urgent need of reformation in
farm management? We cannot disguise the fact that many men have adopted
the vocation of farming, and have thereby undertaken the conduct of a
business which requires not only intelligence of the first rank, but more
fundamental, scientific knowledge, better judgment and greater ability
than any other industrial calling in the world, with few or none of the
necessary qualifications for the business. To be more explicit, in the
great majority of cases, the man has not made good in his calling.
The business now demands a higher order of qualifications and more
knowledge than is possessed by the majority of our farmers. I do not
mean by this that the farmers of this country are incapable of better
things or that they have not the ability, when properly directed, to do
intelligent and scientific farming, but quite the contrary.
The farmers of this country need and must have more education and
scientific knowledge along the line of their special business. They must
learn what the farmers of the older countries learned through force of
circumstances many years ago.
We have heard from this platform during this Congress that average yield
of crops in some European countries is more than double the yield in this
country, although their lands were originally not so rich and fertile as
ours and they have been cultivated and cropped for a thousand years.
There is one fact in connection with this statement that must not be
overlooked. Mark it well. Those countries that are now excelling us in
crop yields and are being referred to as proof of the assertion that all
soils are inexhaustible and contain the necessary plant food for all time
to come, have imported from this country millions and millions of tons of
phosphate and applied to their lands to take the place of the phosphorus
removed by the growing of crops and to supply in sufficient quantities
the food necessary for plant growth, the plant food that has enabled them
to double and even treble our yields.
This importation and use of plant food has not been confined to the
phosphate imported from this country, but they have procured and used
whatever elements of plant food their experience has taught them was
necessary for maximum plant growth. They have fed and not starved their
growing crops. They have replenished what they have removed from the soil
and made it richer instead of poorer.
The importation by these countries of millions of tons of those elements
which enrich their soil should cause us “to sit up and take notice” and
then explain why they have been permitted to invade our shores and carry
away such enormous quantities of phosphate when every pound is needed in
this country and is just as valuable to us as to them. The intelligent
use of this element, which has been allowed to get away from us, would
have doubled the yield of our crops and proved the greatest investment on
record. How shall these facts and the requisite knowledge be brought home
to the farmer?
SOIL ROBBERS.
The great majority of the men who own and farm their own land fail to
“play even” in the matter of soil fertility and must therefore be classed
as soil robbers.
The retired farmer who has moved to town and rents his farm, as a rule,
is a soil robber of a still higher degree. The renter who meets the
exactions of the landlord and can make a living for his family has got to
be an expert and accomplished soil robber. If our soil is to be conserved
and not wasted as at present, there must be a universal or nation-wide
campaign of education that will enlighten and bring home to the people,
including the land owner as well as the tenant, the real facts of the
situation.
The work of our colleges of agriculture, experiment stations, farmers’
institutes and various agricultural organizations are doing a great work,
but this work as yet is only effective in a small degree when we take the
whole country and all of the farmers into consideration.
The plan proposed by the National Soil Fertility League and others, and
to which reference was made by President Taft in his address from this
platform, of placing a man with scientific agricultural knowledge in
every agricultural county in the United States, to advise, direct and
carry on experiments in every community with the aid and coöperation of
the farmers themselves, and where they can see and know every step and
every process and then note the results, is a most admirable one and one
that will hasten and finally solve the problems of soil conservation.
As an illustration of what may be accomplished by actually doing
things in a community where all other educational methods have proven
ineffectual, I desire, briefly, to call attention to my experience in
growing alfalfa in Illinois.
It was undertaken twenty years ago, and at first without marked success.
Later, when inoculation was found to be necessary and dirt was brought
from Kansas to sow upon Illinois land, the climax of folly in the eyes
of neighboring farmers was reached. The idea of sending to Kansas for
anything to put on Illinois soil was ridiculous in the extreme, and the
sanity of the perpetrator of such an act was called in question.
Nevertheless, the study of alfalfa growing and its adaptation to Illinois
conditions went on until this season I have harvested better than five
tons per acre, in three cuttings, from a twenty-five-acre field, in less
than one year from seeding. And the end is not yet, for it is still
growing, and fear has been expressed that I may have to hay all winter.
I want to serve notice upon Mr. Coburn, chairman of the meeting, that
Kansas must look well to her laurels as an alfalfa state, for Illinois is
going to grow alfalfa and lots of it.
When I was preparing this ground for alfalfa and was applying manure,
lime, phosphorus and inoculated soil, and when I was plowing and
following with a subsoil plow and making a perfect seed-bed, my neighbors
were not interested except to regard it as more folly and foolishness
on my part, but when they saw the result and realized that the crop
taken from one acre of that land was worth at least $100.00, and that
it represented ten per cent interest on $1,000.00 as the value of the
land per acre, they were compelled to take notice, and now they are,
figuratively speaking, falling over themselves, to learn how it was done.
There is no mistake about the effect of the demonstration. The farmers of
that community saw the preparations; they saw the alfalfa growing; after
it was cut; in the winrow; in the shock, and on the way to the barn. The
lesson could not have been brought to them as effectively in any other
way.
I want to reiterate my approval of the plan proposed, of placing a
qualified instructor in every county devoted to agriculture, to do things
on the farms that the farmers can see and show them how to procure the
results they read and hear about.
I know that the plan is feasible and that it will bring results, for I
have tried it.
We have reached the point in the extension of agricultural knowledge
where less talk and more demonstration work is demanded.
If this Congress does nothing more than to get behind this movement and
assist in making it the success it deserves, it will have accomplished
more for the maintenance and increase of the fertility of the soil than
any other agency, and helped to solve the greatest of all industrial
problems.
Chairman COBURN—The report of the committee on resolutions, Mr. Fowler,
chairman of the committee.
Mr. Fowler read the resolutions (which will be found in full at the
beginning of this volume) to the Congress, framed and unanimously
adopted by the following committee: Arkansas, E. N. Plank, Decatur;
California, L. R. Glavis, San Francisco; Colorado, Dr. Hubert Work,
Pueblo; Connecticut, Prof. J. W. Towney, Hartford; District of Columbia,
W J McGee; Illinois, A. P. Grout, Winchester; Indiana, H. E. Barnard,
Indianapolis; Iowa, J. R. Doran, Beaver; Kansas, Thomas Potter, Peabody;
Louisiana, Oscar Dowling, Shreveport; Massachusetts, W. P. Wharton,
Groton; Michigan, Henry N. Loud, Au Sable; Minnesota, A. W. Gutridge;
Mississippi, H. L. Witfield, Columbus; Missouri, Dr. W. H. Black,
Marshall; Montana, C. Q. O’Neil, Kalispell; Nebraska, Geo. Coupland,
Elgin; New York, Albert B. Sheldon, Sherman; Ohio, Edmund Secrist,
Wooster; Oklahoma, Thos. P. Smith, Muskogee; Oregon, M. J. Kinney,
Portland; Pennsylvania, Dr. Harry S. Drinker, South Bethlehem; South
Dakota, R. Newbanks, Pierre; Texas, W. H. Gray, Houston; Washington,
Everitt Griggs, Tacoma; Wisconsin, Herbert Quick, Madison.
Chairman COBURN—You have heard the report of the committee on resolutions.
Delegate POTTER—I desire to move its adoption by this Congress of the
able report that we have just heard read by the chairman of the committee
on resolutions.
The motion was duly seconded.
Chairman COBURN—It has been regularly moved and seconded that the report
of the committee as read be adopted. Are you ready for the question?
Delegate JOHN C. SHOFFER, of Chicago—As one looks over this hall and
compares the number of suggestions made by the committee on resolutions,
it would seem that there are more resolutions offered than there are
delegates here. I think it is an unfortunate thing, sir, that this
platform or these resolutions should go out as expressing the sentiment
of this Congress. There are too many absentees to vote on this question
at this time. If we are going to put this forward as an expression of
this great Congress, the delegates should be here to vote on it, and not
be bound by the vote of the few who are here this afternoon. It is not
fair that this should go out as an expression of this Congress when there
are only a handful of delegates left to vote on it.
Delegate CONDRA—We have a committee, one from each state. It is perfectly
regular, and there is a pretty big handful here to vote on it.
Chairman COBURN—Are you ready for the question?
(Cries of question, question.)
All in favor of the motion to adopt the resolution as read, signify
the same by saying aye. Contrary no. The motion is carried and the
resolutions as read adopted.
[Resolutions will be found in front part of this volume.]
Delegate A. W. STUBBS, of Kansas City, Kan.—I realize what the gentleman
has said, that the resolutions are very long, and I am greatly
embarrassed by the enormity of the subject taken in hand by this National
Congress. There has been one disappointment to me, and I have embodied
that in a resolution which I believe will be appreciated by every
delegate present, as well as by the officers who have had to sit and
listen to some of the addresses, well intended, on this floor, but not
germane to the subject at hand, and I have prepared this brief resolution
to submit now, not as a part of the platform, but more as an expression
from the delegates to this Congress.
_Resolved_, that we recommend to the executive committee of this Congress
that in the preparation of future programs care be exercised to prevent
the time of delegates being taken up by papers and speeches not germane
to the purposes of the Congress, and that provision be made for brief
discussion of papers presented by the delegates from the several states.
I move the adoption of this resolution.
The motion was duly seconded.
Chairman COBURN—You have heard the motion. It has been moved and seconded
that the resolution as read by the gentleman be adopted. Are you ready
for the question?
Mr. CONDRA—Will you please read the last section of that resolution?
Chairman COBURN—Will the gentleman read the last, about the several
states?
Mr. STUBBS—And that provision be made for brief discussion of papers
presented by the delegates from the several states. Many interesting
papers have been read here, and many delegates have come hundreds
of miles who would have been glad to say just a word perhaps, not
any extended discussion, but express themselves from the body of the
Congress, and expressions from a body like this would be found invaluable
to the entire audience.
Mr. CONDRA—I asked the question because I misunderstood. I thought that
he meant representation on the program from the various states, which
would absolutely kill this Congress.
Mr. STUBBS—Oh, no.
Mr. CONDRA—I hope that the matter he refers to may be taken up and by
departments, thus giving opportunity for further discussion.
Delegate POTTER—I don’t want any misunderstanding of the intent of this
resolution. The author of it, as I understand it, does not mean to embody
this in the general resolutions, but only as a suggestion of the desire
of this Congress through our committee to make arrangements for the
future.
Delegate STUBBS—That is correct.
Chairman COBURN—Those in favor of the adoption of the resolution as read
say aye. Contrary no. Motion carried.
Chairman COBURN—Our program for the afternoon is now concluded and a
motion to adjourn until 8 o’clock this evening is in order.
Upon motion to adjourn, duly seconded, being put, was unanimously
carried, and Congress adjourned until 8 o’clock p. m.
_CLOSING SESSION._
President WHITE—Ladies and Gentlemen of the third National Conservation
Congress will now come to order. I will introduce as the first speaker
Prof. William Hoynes, Professor of Law at Notre Dame University.
Professor HOYNES—Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: In the limited time
at my disposal, aware as I am that Senator Owen and Mr. Bryan are to
follow, I recognize the need of brevity, and though I shall contend that
the conservation movement is but the fulfillment of a natural impulse
or instinctive privilege as old as the human race, yet I shall do so in
as few words as practicable. In short, what I have to say may be viewed
in a threefold aspect, as conservation in respect to soil fertility,
conservation in respect to waste and extravagance in the affairs of daily
life and the utility of education as a means of furthering the efficacy
of conservation and common sense in these matters.
As viewed by many the principle of conservation is of recent origin.
But this is a mistake. It is as old as mankind. In reality it amounts
simply to the natural protest of reason and experience against waste and
extravagance. It originated simultaneously with the consciousness of the
need of food, raiment and shelter for the protection and preservation of
life.