THE KINDERGARTEN
HEART-OF-EGYPT, ILLINOIS,
November 9, 1909.
Hon. James J. Hill,
Great Northern Railroad Company, St. Paul, Minnesota.
MY DEAR SIR:--I have read with very great interest your article in
the November _World's Work _on "What We Must Do to be Fed." I wonder
if you read _The American Farm Review!_ In the editorial columns of
that journal, issue of October 28, 1909, occurs the following:
"The pessimist always assumes that every man who quits farming for
some other business does so because there is something the matter
with the farm. Mr. James J. Hill has recently considered the
question and decided that, unless the farmer and his family can be
confined on the land and be compelled to do better work than they
have been doing, the balance of the population must starve to death.
The bug-aboo of impending decadence raised by such talk is based
upon a wrong assumption, inadequate statistics, and a failure to
comprehend the evolutional movement in agriculture."
The evolutional movement means, of course, that we are different
from other people. Have not England, Germany and France run their
lands down until they produce only fourteen bushels of wheat per
acre and have we not steadily built ours up to an average yield of
thirty bushels? Other peoples wear out their soil because they fail
to have part in the evolutional movement; whereas, did we not come
to America and at once begin to make our rich land richer than it
ever was in the virgin state? Do you not know, Sir, that the oldest
lands in America are now the richest, most productive, and most
valuable? We admit, of course, that the Bureau of Soils of the
United States Department of Agriculture reports the common level
upland loam soil of St. Mary country, Maryland, to be valued at $1
to $3 an acre, and the same kind of land in Prince George county,
adjoining the District of Columbia, to be worth $1.50 to $5; but do
you not know the American evolutional movement could easily move all
those decimal points two places and at once make those values read
from $100 to $500 an acre. And likewise, it would be a very simple
matter to change the yield of corn in Georgia from eleven bushels
per acre and have it read one hundred and ten bushels. Why not, if
an acre of corn in the adjoining State of South Carolina has
produced two hundred and thirty-nine bushels in one season? Do you
not see that this simple evolution would also put plate glass in the
thousands of windowless homes now inhabited by human beings, both
white and colored, in the state of Georgia?
There is another phase of this evolutional movement which should not
be overlooked. There is already fast developing in this country a
class of people who can live and grow fat on hot air, and they will
tell you that your only trouble is poor digestion, and they are glad
that they can see the bright side of things and enjoy life in this
glorious country, assured that the future will take care of itself.
Have not all other great agricultural countries rapidly gotten into
this evolutional movement until all their people live on Easy
Street?
I have a letter from a missionary in China, a former schoolmate,
Clarence Robertson, who resigned the position of Assistant Professor
of mechanical engineering in Purdue University in order to accept in
the largest sense the Master's specific invitation to "Go ye,
therefore, and teach all nations."
This letter was written in February, 1907 and contained the
following statement regarding the famine district in which the
writer was located:
"At the present time the only practical thing to do is to let four
hundred thousand people starve, and try to get seed grain for the
remainder to plant their spring crops."
I think we have failed utterly, Mr. Hill, to lay special emphasis
upon either the evolutional or the emotional in agriculture. Is it
not probable that a superabundance of emotion would even permit the
constitution to wave the bread requirement in the
bread-and-water-with-love diet? As a cure for pessimism the
emotional tonic is strongly recommended.
On the other hand, there are some people who are even too emotional,
people who are inclined to sit up and take notice when the
mathematics and statistics are spread out in clear light and plainly
reveal the fact that the time is near at hand when their children
may lack for bread. (They already lack for meat and milk and eggs in
many places). To ally any feeling of this sort that might tend to
excite those who are so emotional as even to love their own
grandchildren, some sort of soothing syrup should be administered. A
preparation put out by the Chief of the United States Bureau of
Soils and fully endorsed by the great optimist, the Secretary of
Agriculture, is recommended as an article very much superior to Mrs.
Winslow's. As a moderate dose for an adult, read the following
extracts from pages 66, 78, and 80 of Bureau of Soils Bulletin 55
(1909), by the Chief of the Bureau:
"The soil is the one indestructible, immutable asset that the nation
possesses. It is the one resource that cannot be exhausted; that
cannot be used up."
"From the modern conception of the nature and purpose of the soil it
is evident that it cannot wear out, that so far as the mineral food
is concerned it will continue automatically to supply adequate
quantities of the mineral plant foods for crops."
"As we see it now, the main cause of infertile soils or the
deterioration of soils is the improper sanitary conditions
originally present in the soil or arising from our injudicious
culture and rotation of crops. It is, of course, exceedingly
difficult to work out the principles which govern the proper
rotation for any particular soil."
"As a national asset the soil is safe as a means of feeding mankind
for untold ages to come. So far as our investigations show, the soil
will not be exhausted of any one or all of its mineral plant food
constituents. If the coal and iron give out, as it is predicted they
will before long, the soil can be depended on to furnish food,
light, heat, and habitation not only for the present population but
for an enormously larger population than the world has at present."
"Personally, I take a most hopeful view of the situation as respects
the soil resources of our country and of the world at large. I
cannot bring myself to believe that the discouraging reports that
have been issued from time to time as to the threatened
deterioration of our soils, as to the exhaustion of any particular
element of fertility, will ever be realized."
Sweeten to taste, and repeat the dose if necessary.
If you desire mathematical proof that we can always continue to take
definite and measurable amounts of plant food away from the limited
supplies still remaining in our American soils and still have enough
left to supply the needs of all future crops, let it be understood:
That y = x
Then xy = X3
And xy-y2 = x3-y2
Or y(x-y)=(x + y) (x-y)
Hence, y = x + y
Thus, y = 2y
Therefore, 1=2
Now cube both sides of the last equation and:
1=8
Multiply by one hundred and sixty, the number of pounds of
phosphorus still remaining in the common upland soil of Southern
Maryland, and behold:
160 =1280
Thus the soil again becomes the equal of the $200 corn belt
land,--Q. E. D.
Fortunately, Mr. Hill, you have not found it "exceedingly difficult
to work out the principles which govern the proper rotation" that
"actually enriches the land."
Seriously, I hope you will permit me to take this opportunity to say
that I deplore, as must all right-minded and clear-thinking men, the
occasional petty criticisms which attribute to you some selfish
motive for the honest and noble stand you have taken concerning the
importance of immediate action and of a widespread, far-reaching,
and generally effective movement looking toward, not the
conservation, but the restoration, and permanent preservation of
American soils. According to the Scriptures, there is a sin which
God, Himself, will not forgive; namely, the sin of imputing bad
motives to the one who does right from motives only good and pure.
Thoughts that deserve a place of honor in American history you have
expressed in the following words:
"The farm is the basis of all industry, but for many years this
country has made the mistake of unduly assisting manufacture,
commerce, and other activities that center in cities, at the expense
of the farm. The result is a neglected system of agriculture and the
decline of the farming interest. But all these other activities are
founded upon the agricultural growth of the nation and must continue
to depend upon it. Every manufacturer, every merchant, every
business man, and every good citizen is deeply interested in
maintaining the growth and development of our agricultural
resources. Herein lies the true secret of our anxious interest in
agricultural methods; because, in the long run, they mean life or
death to future millions; who are no strangers or invaders, but our
own children's children, and who will pass judgment upon us
according to what we have made of the world in which their lot is to
be cast."
True and noble thoughts are these, from the master mind of a great
statesman; for there are statesmen who neither grace nor disgrace
the Halls of Congress.
Your article contains twenty-eight pages of wholesome reading matter
and instructive illustrations, and, in addition, about one page, I
regret to say, of misinformation that will do much to destroy your
otherwise valuable contribution to agricultural literature.
Briefly you have shown very clearly and very correctly that the
present practice of agriculture in America tends toward land ruin,
and that, with our rapidly increasing population, with continued
depletion of our vast areas of cultivated soils, and with no
possibility of any large extension of well-watered arable lands, we
are already facing the serious problem of providing sufficient food
for our own people.
You summarize your conclusions along this line in the following
words:
"We have to provide for a contingency not distant from us by nearly
a generation, but already present. The food condition presses upon
us now. The shortage has begun. Witness the great fall in wheat
exports and the rise of prices. Obviously it is time to quit
speculating about what may occur even twenty or thirty years hence,
and begin to take thought for the morrow. As far as our food supply
is concerned, right now the lean years have begun."
It is certain that the time is near when our food supplies shall
become inadequate if our present practices continue, but the
enforced reduction in animal products will at least postpone the
time of actual famine in America. I keep in mind always that we are
feeding much grain to domestic animals, an extremely wasteful
practice so far as economy of human food is concerned; because, as
an average, animals return in meat and milk not more than onefifth
as much food value as they destroy in the corresponding grain
consumed; and, as we gradually reduce the amounts of grain that are
fed to cattle, sheep, and swine, we shall also gradually increase
our human food supply. Ultimately our milk-producing and
meat-producing animals will be fed only the grass grown upon the
non-arable lands and possibly some refuse forage not suitable for
human food or more valuable for green manure, unless we modify our
present practice and tendency, which we can do if the proper
influences are exerted by the intelligent people of this country,
and thus make possible the continuation of high standards of living
for all our people.
I keep in mind, too, that much of the food taken into the average
American kitchen is wasted, and that progress in the science of
feeding the man will ultimately prevent this waste and, by adding to
this better preparation and combination of foods, will increase to
some extent the nutritive value of our present food supply.
The serious fact remains, however, that our older lands are
decreasing in productive power and, in spite of what may be
accomplished by such methods of conservation, we are now facing a
rapidly approaching shortage of food supplies for the rapidly
increasing population of these United States; and you have put me
and all other American citizens under lasting obligations to you for
your frankness, good sense, and true patriotism in thus pointing out
n advance our great national weakness.
According to the statistics of the United States Government, a
comparison of the last five years reported in this century with the
last five years of the old century, shows, by these two five-year
averages, that our annual production of wheat has increased from
about five hundred million to seven hundred million bushels: that
our annual production of corn has increased from two and one-quarter
billion to two and three-quarter billion bushels; that our wheat
exports have decreased from thirty-seven per cent. to seventeen per
cent. of our total production; that our corn exports have decreased
from nine per cent. to three per cent. of our total production; and
yet the average price of wheat, by the five-year periods, has
increased thirty-one per cent., and the average price of corn has
increased ninety-one per cent., during the same period.
The latest Year Book of the Department of Agriculture (1908 )
furnishes the average yields of wheat and corn for four successive
ten-year periods, from 1866 to 1905. By combining these into two
twenty-year periods this record of forty years shows that the
average yield of wheat for the United States increased one bushel
per acre, while the average yield of corn decreased one and one-half
bushels per acre, according to these two twenty-year averages.
If we consider only the statistics for the North-Central states,
extending from Ohio to Kansas and from "Egypt" to Canada, the same
forty-year record shows the average yield of wheat to have increased
one-half bushel per acre, while the average yield of corn decreased
two bushels per acre.
Thus, notwithstanding the great areas of rich virgin soils brought
under cultivation in the West and Northwest during the last forty
years, notwithstanding the abandonment of great areas of wornout
lands in the East and Southeast during the same years,
notwithstanding the enormous extension of dredge ditching and tile
drainage, and, notwithstanding the marked improvement in seed and in
the implements of cultivation, the average yield per acre of the two
great grain crops of the United States has not even been maintained,
the decrease in corn being greater than the increase in wheat, and
not only for the entire United States, but also for the great new
states of the corn belt and wheat belt.
( Seasonal variations are so great that shorter periods than
twenty-year averages cannot be considered trustworthy for yield per
acre.)
Meanwhile, the total population of the United States increased from
thirty-eight millions in 1870 to seventy-six millions in 1900, or an
increase of one hundred per cent. in thirty years; and the only
means by which we have been able to feed this increase in population
has been by increasing our acreage of cultivated crops and by
decreasing our exportation of foodstuffs; and I need not remind you
that the limit to our relief is near in both of these directions.
But have we decreased our exportation of phosphate? Oh, no. On the
contrary, under the soothing influence of the most pleasing and
acceptable doctrine that our soil is an indestructible, immutable
asset, which cannot be depleted, our exportation of rock phosphate
has increased during the years of the present century from six
hundred and ninety thousand tons in 1900, to one-million three
hundred and thirty thousand tons in 1908, an increase of practically
one hundred per cent., in accordance with the published reports of
the United States Geological Survey.
But I am writing to you, Mr. Hill, not only to thank you for what
you have said and shown in the twenty-eight pages above referred to,
but also in part to repay my obligation to you by giving you some
correct information, which I am altogether confident you will
appreciate; namely, that, while you are a graduate student or past
master in your knowledge of the supply and demand of the world's
markets, you are just entering the kindergarten class in the study
of soil fertility, as witness the following extracts from the one
erroneous page of your article.
"Right methods of farming, without which no agricultural country
such as this can hope to remain prosperous, or even to escape
eventual poverty, are not complicated and are within the reach of
the most modest means. They include a study of soils and seeds, so
as to adapt the one to the other; a diversification of industry,
including the cultivation of different crops and the raising of live
stock; a careful rotation of crops, so that the land will not be
worn out by successive years of single cropping; intelligent
fertilizing by the system of rotation, by cultivating leguminous
plants, and, above all, by the economy and use of every particle of
fertilizing material from stock barns and yards; a careful selection
of grain used for seed; and, first of all perhaps in importance, the
substitution of the small farm, thoroughly tilled, for the large
farm, with its weeds, its neglected corners, its abused soil, and
its thin product. This will make room for the new population whose
added product will help to restore our place as an exporter of
foodstuffs. Let us set these simple principles of the new method out
again in order:
_"First--_The farmer must cultivate no more land than he can till
thoroughly. With less labor he will get more results. Official
statistics show that the net profit from one crop of twenty bushels
of wheat to the acre is as great as that from two of sixteen, after
original cost of production has been paid.
_"Second--_There must be rotation of crops. Ten years of single
cropping will pretty nearly wear out any but the richest soil. A
proper three or fiveyear rotation of crops actually enriches the
land.
_"Third--_There must be soil renovation by fertilizing; and the best
fertilizer is that provided by nature herself--barnyard manure.
Every farmer can and should keep some cattle, sheep, and hogs on his
place. The farmer and his land cannot prosper until stock raising
becomes an inseparable part of agriculture. Of all forage fed to
live stock at least one-third in cash value remains on the land in
the form of manure that soon restores worn-out soil to fertility and
keeps good land from deteriorating. By this system the farm may be
made and kept a source of perpetual wealth."
Your _first principle _will be agreed to and emphasized by all; but
it should be kept in mind that the large farms are frequently better
tilled than the small farms. The $200 land in the corn belt is
usually "worked for all that's in it." It is tile-drained and well
cultivated, and the best of seed is used. If more thorough tillage
would increase the profits, these corn-belt farmers would certainly
practice it.
It ought to be known (1) that as an average of six years the
Illinois Experiment Station produced seventy and three-tenths
bushels of corn per acre with the ordinary four cultivation, and
only seventy-two and eight-tenths bushels with additional
cultivation even up to eight times; and (2) that the average yield
of corn in India on irrigated land varies from seven bushels in poor
years to twelve bushels in good seasons, and this is where the
average farm is about three acres in size.
One Illinois farmer with a four-horse team raises more corn than ten
Georgia farmers with a mule a piece on the same total acreage
Fertile soil and competent labor are the great essentials in crop
production. A mere increase in country population does not increase
the productive power of the soil.
The farms down here in "Egypt" average much smaller than those in
the corn belt of Illinois, but our "Egyptian" farms are nevertheless
poorly tilled as a rule and some of them are already becoming
abandoned for agricultural purposes.
Certainly the land should always be well tilled, but tillage makes
the soil poorer, not richer. Tillage liberates plant food but adds
none. "A little farm well tilled" is all right if well manured, but
it should not be forgotten that the men who consider "Ten Acres
Enough" are market gardeners, or truck farmers, who are not
satisfied until in the course of six or eight years they have
applied to their land about two hundred tons of manure per acre, all
made from crops grown on other lands.
All the manure produced in all the states would provide only thirty
tons per acre for the farm lands of Illinois. In round numbers there
are eighty million cattle and horses in the United States, and our
annual corn crop is harvested from one hundred million acres. All
the manure produced by all domestic animals would barely fertilize
the corn lands with ten tons per acre if none whatever were lost or
wasted; and, if all farm animals were figured on the basis of
cattle, there is only one head for each ten acres of farm land in
the United States.
Your _second principle _is, that "a proper three or five-year
rotation of crops actually enriches the land."
I hope the God of truth and a long-suffering, misguided people will
forgive you for that false teaching. If there is any one practice
the value of which is fully understood by the farmers and landowners
in the Eastern states and in all old agricultural countries, it is
the practice of crop rotation. Indeed, the rotation of crops is much
more common and much better understood and much more fully
appreciated in the East than it is in the corn belt. Practically all
we know of crop rotation we have learned from the East. Every old
depleted agricultural country has worn out the soil by good systems
of crop rotation. I once took a legal option of an "abandoned" farm
in Maryland (beautiful location, two miles from a railroad station,
gently undulating upland loam, at $10 per acre) that had been worn
out under a four-year rotation of corn, wheat, meadow and pasture. A
few acres of tobacco were usually grown in one corner of the corn
field, and clover and timothy were regularly used for meadow and
pasture. Wheat, tobacco and livestock were sold, and manure was
applied for tobacco and so far as possible for corn also. In the
later years of the system the ordinary commercial fertilizer was
also applied for the wheat at the usual rate of two hundred pounds
per acre, this having become a "necessity" toward the end of this
slow but sure system of land ruin.
The "simple principles" of your "new method" were understood and
practiced in Roman agriculture two thousand years ago; and they
included not only thorough tillage, careful seed selection, regular
crop rotation, and the use of farm manure, but also the use of green
manures. Thus Cato wrote:
"Take care to have your wheat weeded twice--with the hoe, and also
by hand."
And again Cato wrote:
"Wherein does a good system of agriculture consist? In the first
place, in thorough plowing; in the second place, in thorough
plowing; and, in the third place, in manuring."
Varro, who lived at the same time as Cato, wrote as follows:
"The land must rest every second year, or be sown with lighter kinds
of seeds, which prove less exhausting to the soil. A field is not
sown entirely for the crop which is to be obtained the same year,
but partly for the effect to be produced in the following; because
there are many plants which, when cut down and left on the land,
improve the soil. Thus lupines, for instance, are plowed into a poor
soil in lieu of manure. Horse manure is about the best suited for
meadow land, and so in general is that of beasts of burden fed on
barley; for manure made from this cereal makes the grass grow
luxuriantly."
Virgil wrote in his _Georgics:_
"Still will the seeds, tho chosen with toilsome pains, Degenerate,
if man's industrious hand Cull not each year the largest and the
best."
It was in 1859 that Baron von Liebig wrote as follows, regarding
these and similar _ancient _teachings:
"All these rules had, as history tells us, only a temporary effect;
they hastened the decay of Roman agriculture; and the farmer
ultimately found that he had exhausted all his expedients to keep
his fields fruitful and reap remunerative crops from them. Even in
Columella's time, the produce of the land was only fourfold. It is
not the land itself that constitutes the farmer's wealth, but it is
in the constituents of the soil, which serve for the nutrition of
plants, that this wealth truly consists."
Suppose, Mr. Hill, that a successful American farmer should tell you
that your bank account will actually increase if you will give from
three to five members of your family the privilege of writing checks
instead of following the single checking system. "But," you will
ask, "doesn't rotation produce a larger aggregate yield of crops
than the single crop system?" Certainly, and, likewise, a rotation
of the check book will produce a larger aggregate of the checks
written; but the ultimate effect on the bank deposit is the same as
on the natural deposit of plant food in the soil, and finally the
checks will not be honored. Indeed, it would be a fine sort of
perpetual motion if we could actually enrich the soil by the simple
rotation of crops, and thus make something out of nothing.
Consider, for example, the common three-year rotation, corn, wheat,
and clover. A fifty-bushel crop of corn removes twelve pounds of
phosphorus from the soil; the twenty-five bushel wheat crop draws
out eight pounds; and then the two-ton crop of clover withdraws ten
pounds, making thirty pounds required for this simple rotation. The
most common type of land in St. Mary county, Maryland, after two
hundred years of farming, contains phosphorus enough in the soil for
five rotations of this simple sort. Mathematically that is all the
further traffic in rotations that soil can bear. Agriculturally that
soil has refused to bear any sort of traffic, whether single or in
rotations, and has been abandoned for farm use except where
fertilized.
These crops would remove from the soil one hundred and twenty-four
pounds of nitrogen in the corn and wheat, and the roots and stubble
of the clover would contain forty pounds of nitrogen. Now, if the
soil furnishes seventy-six pounds of nitrogen to the corn crop and
forty-eight pounds to the wheat crop, will it furnish forty pounds
to the clover crop, or as much as remains in the roots and stubble?
If so, how does the rotation actually enrich the soil in nitrogen?
You will be interested to know that there are many exact records of
the effect upon the soil of the rotation of crops. This particular
three-year rotation has been followed at the Ohio Agricultural
Experiment Station for thirteen years, and the average yield of
wheat has been, not twenty bushels, not sixteen bushels, but eleven
bushels per acre, where no plant food was applied; although where
farm manure was used the wheat yielded twenty bushels, and with
manure and fine-ground natural rock phosphate added the average
yield of wheat for the thirteen years has been more than twenty-six
bushels per acre. The corresponding yields for corn are thirty-two,
fifty-three and sixty-one bushels, and for clover they are one and
two-tenths, one and six-tenths and two and two-tenths tons of hay
per acre.
You will wish to know also that the Ohio Station has conducted a
five-year rotation of corn, oats, wheat, clover, and timothy for the
last fifteen years, both with and without the application of
commercial plant food. As an average of the fifteen years the
unfertilized and fertilized tracts have produced, respectively:
30 and 48 bushels of corn
32 and 50 bushels of oats and 27 bushels of wheat .9 and 1.6 tons of
clover
1.3 and 1.8 tons of timothy
In 1908 the unfertilized land produced nine-tenths ton of clover,
while land treated with farm manure produced three and two-tenths
tons per acre.
You will welcome the information that the average yield of wheat on
an Illinois experiment field down here in "Egypt," in a four-year
rotation, including both cowpeas and clover, has been eleven and
one-half bushels on unfertilized land, fourteen bushels where legume
crops have been plowed under, and twenty-seven bushels where
limestone and phosphorus have been added with the legume crops
turned under; and that the aggregate value of the four crops, corn,
oats, wheat, and clover, from another "Egyptian" farm, has been
$25.97 per acre on unfertilized land, and $54.24 where limestone and
phosphorus have been applied.
In your very busy and very successful railroad experience, you may
have overlooked the reports of the Pennsylvania Agricultural
Experiment Station, showing the results of a four-year rotation of
crops that has been conducted with very great care for more than a
quarter of a century. These, you will agree, are exactly such
absolute data as we sorely need just now when facing the stupendous
problem of changing from an agricultural system whose equal has
never been known for rapidity of soil exhaustion to a system which
shall actually enrich the land. By averaging the results from the
first twelve years and also those from the second twelve years, in
this rotation of corn, oats, wheat, and hay (clover and timothy), we
find that the yields have decreased as follows:
Corn decreased 34 per cent.
Oats decreased 31 per cent.
Wheat decreased 4 per cent.
Hay decreased 29 per cent.
Appalling, is it not? It is the best information America affords in
answer to the question, Will the rotation of crops actually enrich
the land?
No, Sir. We cannot make crops nor bank accounts out of nothing. The
rotation of crops does not enrich the soil, does not even maintain
the fertility of the soil. On the contrary, the rotation of crops,
like the rotation of your check book, actually depletes the soil
more rapidly than the single system; and, if you ever have your
choice between two farms of equal original fertility, one of which
has been cropped with wheat only, and the other with a good three or
five-year rotation, for fifty years, take my advice and choose the
"worn-out" wheat farm. Then adopt a good system of cropping with a
moderate use of clover, and you will soon discover that your land is
not worn out, but "almos' new lan" as a good Swede friend of mine
reported who made a similar choice. But beware of the land that has
been truly worn out under a good rotation, which avoids the insects
and diseases of the single crop system, and also furnishes regularly
a moderate amount of clover roots which decay very rapidly and thus
stimulate the decomposition of the old humus and the liberation of
mineral plant food from the soil.
Perhaps you have heard of Rothamsted. If not, your kindergarten
teacher is at fault. A four-year rotation of crops has been followed
on Agdell field for more than sixty years. An average of the crop
yields of the last twenty years reveals:
(1) That the yield of turnips has decreased from ten tons to
one-half ton per acre since 1848.
(2) That the yield of barley has decreased from forty-six bushels to
fourteen bushels since 1849.
(3) That the yield of clover has decreased from two and eight-tenth
tons to one-half ton since 1850.
(4) That the yield of wheat has decreased from thirty bushels to
twenty-four bushels since 1851, wheat, grown once in four years,
being the only crop worth raising as an average of the last twenty
years.
No, Sir. Neither optimism, nor ignorance, nor bigotry, nor deception
can controvert these facts.
Do you know that the people of India rotate their crops? They do;
and they use many legumes; and some of their soils now contain only
a trace of phosphorus, too small to be determined in figures by the
chemist. Do you know there are more of our own Aryan Race hungry in
India than live in the United States?
Do you know that Russia regularly practices a three-year rotation
and actually harvests only two crops in three years, with one year
of green manuring? Yes, and the average yield of wheat for twenty
years is only eight and one-quarter bushels per acre.
Think on these things.
Your _third principle _is, that "of all forage fed to live stock at
least one-third in cash value remains on the land in the form of
manure that soon restores worn-out soil to fertility and keeps good
land from deteriorating. By this system the farm may be made and
kept a source of perpetual wealth."
I grieve with you; pity 'tis, 'tis not true.
No, Sir. Neither crops nor animals can be made out of nothing, and
no independent system of livestock farming can add to the soil a
pound of any element of plant food, aside from nitrogen, and even
this addition is due to the legume crops grown and not to the live
stock.
Under the best system of live-stock farming about three-fourths of
the nitrogen, three-fourths of the phosphorus, and one-third of the
organic matter contained in the food consumed can be returned to the
land if the total excrements, both solid and liquid, are saved
without loss. Of course, the produce used for bedding can all be
returned, but it could also be returned without live stock.
Under a good system of crop rotation with all grain sold from the
farm it is possible to return to the soil more than one-third of the
phosphorus and more than one-half of the organic matter contained in
the crops, and even as much nitrogen as all of the crops remove from
the land in the grain sold. Thus, with a four-year rotation of
wheat, corn, oats, and clover, and a catch crop of clover grown with
the wheat and turned under late the following spring for corn, we
may plow under three tons of clover containing one hundred and
twenty pounds of nitrogen, in return for the one hundred and
nineteen pounds removed from the soil for the twenty-five bushels of
wheat, fifty bushels of corn, and fifty bushels of oats. These
amounts of grain and the two bushels of clover seed might be sold
from the farm, while the two and one-half tons of straw, one and
one-half tons of stalks, and three tons of clover might be returned
to the land. These amounts aggregate seven tons of organic matter,
or the equivalent of seventeen tons of manure, measured by the
nitrogen content, or of twenty-four tons, measured by the content of
organic matter. To replace the twenty-two pounds of phosphorus sold
from the farm in the grain of these four crops would require the
expenditure of sixty-six cents at the present prices for raw
phosphate delivered at Heart-of-Egypt.
I have no doubt you will be glad to have your attention called to
the fact that the world does not live wholly, or even largely, upon
meat and milk. Bread is the staff of life, and I note from your
_World's Work _article that you prefer to have the bread made of
wheat. Thus, most farmers must raise and sell grain and vegetables.
If no independent system of live-stock farming can add a pound of
phosphorus to the one hundred and sixty pounds still remaining in
the great body of the level uplands constituting forty-one per cent.
of St. Mary county, and forty-five thousand seven hundred and
seventy acres of Prince George county, Maryland, adjoining the
District of Columbia, nor even maintain the phosphorus supply in our
good lands, then what must we do to be fed?
Manifestly, we should make large use of legume crops for the
production of farm manure or green manure; and, manifestly, America
should stop selling every year for five million dollars enough raw
phosphate for the production of more than a billion dollars' worth
of wheat. How long can we afford to give away a thousand millions
for five millions?
Our annual corn crop is nearly three billion bushels, while the
estimated value of all the timber on the still remaining federal
lands is only one billion dollars. Again, our three trillion tons of
coal is sufficient for an annual consumption of half a billion tons
for six thousands years, whereas the United States Geological Survey
has estimated that at the present rate of increase in mining and
exportation our total supply of high-grade phosphate will be
exhausted in fifty years. It seems to me that about ninety per cent.
of the talk about conservation of natural resources is directed
toward ten per cent. of the resources, when we remember the soil as
the foundation of all agriculture and all industry.
Do you know, Mr. Hill, that, at the Second Conservation Conference
called by the President of the United States, Doctor Van Hise, of
the University of Wisconsin, was the only man to raise his voice in
the interests of the common soils of America? For three days the
statesman and experts discussed the forests, forests, forests, and
the waters, waters, and the coal and iron; and for fifteen minutes
President Van Hise pleaded for the conservation of phosphate, _the
master key to all our material prosperity; _and he was called a
crank with a hobby.
With deep respect, I am,
Very sincerely yours,
PERCY JOHNSTON