| FROM RETURNS MADE TO MY INQUIRY. |From United
|----------------+----------+-------------|States report
NAME. | Area of State. | Arable. | Suitable to | in wheat,
| | | wheat. | 1897.
-------------+----------------+----------+-------------+-------------
Minnesota | 84,287 | 66,000 | 50,000 | 7,189
South Dakota | 76,000 | 42,500 | 40,000 | 4,187
North Dakota | 74,312 | 50,000 | 50,000 | 4,300
Illinois | 56,000 | 54,000 | 20,000 | 2,292
Missouri | 68,000 | 64,000 | 64,000 | 2,448
Wisconsin | 56,000 | 35,000 | 35,000 | 961
|----------------+----------+-------------+------------
| 414,599 | 311,500 | 259,000 | 21,372
|================+==========+=============+===========
Texas | 269,694 | 200,000 | 100,000 | 700
California | 158,360 | 54,000 | 30,000 | 5,062
Montana | 145,310 | 30,000 | 25,000 | 109
Idaho | 87,000 | 30,000 | 15,000 | 192
|----------------+----------+-------------+------------
| 660,364 | 314,000 | 170,000 | 6,063
|================+==========+=============+============
Total | 1,074,963 | 625,500 | 429,000 | 27,435
-------------+----------------+----------+-------------+------------
I do not give the data of the Eastern and Southern States, and I have
selected only the most complete data of the other States, choosing the
more conservative where two returns have been made from one State.
The foregoing States produced a little over one third of the wheat
crop of 1897. They comprise a little over one third the area of the
land of the United States, excluding Alaska.
The list covers States like Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, now
very fully occupied relatively to Texas, Montana, and Idaho, as yet
but sparsely settled.
Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Oregon, and
Washington combined far exceed the above list in wheat production;
but, as I have no complete data from these States, I can only say that
the national or census statistics, as far as they go, develop
corresponding conditions to those above given. The very small product
of Texas and Montana, even of Idaho, as compared with the claimed
potential, will attract notice, and perhaps excite incredulity. But
let it be remembered that in 1880 the Territory of Dakota yielded less
than 3,000,000 bushels of wheat, while in 1898 the two States of North
and South Dakota, formerly in one Territory, claim to have produced
100,000,000 bushels. Perhaps it will then be admitted that the
potential of Montana, and even of Idaho, may be attained in some
measure corresponding to the reports from those States; but as yet
their product is a negligible quantity, as that of Dakota was only
twenty years since.[9]
Again, let it be remembered that Texas will produce a cotton crop,
marketed in 1898-'99, above the average of the five ante-war crops of
the whole country, and nearly equal to the largest crop ever grown in
the United States before the war. Texas could not only produce the
present entire cotton crop of the United States but of the world, on
but a small part of her land which is well suited to cotton. When
these facts are considered, perhaps the potential of that great State
in wheat and other grain, in cattle and in sheep, as well as in
cotton, may begin to be comprehended.
The writer is well aware that this treatment of a great problem is
very incomplete, but it is the best that the leisure hours of a very
busy business life would permit. If it discloses the general ignorance
of our resources, the total inadequacy of many of our official
statistics, the lack of any real agricultural survey, and the
necessity for a reorganization and concentration of the scientific
departments of the Government as well as of a permanent census bureau,
it will have served a useful purpose.
If it also serves to call attention to the meager average crops and
the poor quality of our agriculture as a whole down to a very recent
period, it may suggest even to those to whose minds the statistics of
the past convey but gloomy and "doubtful views" of the future, that
the true progress in scientific agriculture could only begin when
substantially all the fertile land in the possession of the Government
had either been given away or otherwise distributed. So long as "sod
crops" and the single-crop system yielded adequate returns to
unskilled farmers, no true science of agriculture could be expected,
any more than a large product of wool can be hoped for in States where
it has been wittily said that "every poor man keeps one cur dog, and
every d--d poor man keeps two or more."
Finally, if I shall have drawn attention to the very effective work
which is being done in the agricultural experiment stations by men of
first-rate ability, I shall have drawn attention to a great fact. This
work has already led to a complete revolution from the old practice
of maltreating land, and to the renovation of soils that had been
partially exhausted. Governor Henry A. Wise, of Virginia, long since
condemned the old methods of Southern agriculture by telling his
hearers, "The niggers skinned the land and the white men skinned the
niggers." We are changing all that by new and progressive methods. I
hope that in this recognition of the work of the experiment stations I
shall have made some return for the attention which has been given to
my inquiry by so many of my correspondents that the space assigned me
forbids a list of my authorities being given by name.
When the suggestion is made from the Department of Agriculture that
all that science has yet accomplished has been to stop a tendency to a
lessened production from the land now under the plow, and when it is
even suggested that in 1930 the present meager average of crops per
acre may still exist, it seems to me that little credit is given to
the good work already accomplished in the short period in which the
separate Department of Agriculture has been represented in the
Cabinet, especially in the last five or six years, while the
suggestion itself shows very little consideration of the great work of
the experiment stations.
Unless it can be proved that my correspondents and myself have entered
into a conspiracy to mislead the public in dealing with the potential
of this country in wheat production, nearly all the deductions from
the figures of the past must be considered mere statistical rubbish.
These statistics cover sections and States in which wheat should never
be grown or attempted in competition with the true wheat soils and
climate. As well might misplaced iron furnaces, built to boom city
lots where there are no favorable conditions for the production of
iron, be included in an average and held up as a standard of our
potential in iron and steel production.
In my efforts to discover the rule of progress in the arts and
occupations of the people of this country, it has become plain that in
ratio to the application of science and invention to every art the
quantity of product is increased, the number of workmen is relatively
diminished, the price of the product tends to diminish, while the
wages or earnings of those who do the work are augmented. I have
investigated many branches of industry, and find evidence conclusive
to my own mind that such is the law of industrial development. This
rule is subject to temporary variations under the restriction of
statutes. In my own judgment, the so-called protective principle or
policy of interference with commerce by imposing fines on foreign
imports has retarded the progress of the specially protected arts, and
has in some measure obstructed the diversity of manufactures; but the
opposite policy of absolutely free trade in our domestic traffic over
a greater area and among a much larger number of people than have
elsewhere secured their own liberty has been so much more potent in
its progressive influence as to have lessened the evils of the
restrictions on foreign trade.
According to my observation, all the efforts to regulate railroad
charges by State legislation and under the interstate commerce act
have greatly retarded the progress of the railway, and have deprived
great States, notably Texas, of any service at all commensurate to the
demand which might otherwise have been supplied to the mutual benefit
of the owners of the railways and the inhabitants of the State. The
most serious retarding influence, especially evil in its effect upon
farmers, was the useless panic of 1893, caused by the silver
craze--that is to say, by the effort to enact a force bill by which
the producers of our great crops would have been compelled to accept
money of half the purchasing power of that to which their industry had
been long adjusted. This caused a temporary paralysis of industry, in
which I think none suffered so much as the farmers of the country.
But admitting these temporary variations, I find the same rule
governing the products of the farm that governs the mine, the factory,
and the workshop--namely, a lessening of the number occupied in ratio
to the product; a great reduction in the cost of labor; an increased
return in due proportion of the skill and intelligence of the farmer;
a rapid reduction in the farm mortgages, ending at the present date in
making the farmers of the grain-growing States the creditors of the
world, especially those occupied upon wheat.
But in the development of this progress we find the reverse of the
practice in the factory and the workshop. The most important
applications of science and invention led first to what might be
called the manufacture of wheat on an extensive method of making a
single crop on great areas of land. That phase has about spent its
force; the great farms are in process of division; the single-crop
system has about ended; the intensive system of making a larger
product from a lessened area with alternation and variation in crops
is rapidly taking the place of former methods.
Therefore, while many branches of manufacturing tend more and more to
the collective method, the tendency in agriculture is more and more to
individualism in dealing with the land itself, coupled with collective
ownership in the more expensive farm machinery, in creameries, cheese
factories, and the like. We are apparently at a halfway stage in this
revolution of agriculture. The intelligent and intensive methods of
breeding cattle and sheep is also rapidly taking the place of the
semibarbarous conditions of the ranch.
If these points are well taken, the very suggestion that we must
compute the land which should be under the plow in 1890 in order to
supply the needs of 130,000,000 people on the basis of the imperfect
statistics and inadequate data of the past, becomes almost an
impertinence. It is much more probable that the 400,000 square miles
which now meet the needs of 75,000,000 people, with an enormous excess
for export, will in 1930 still suffice for the domestic supply of
130,000,000 people, with a proportionate export corresponding to the
present.
If the product of the farms of the West now yielding the largest
crops, or of the renovated lands of the South now yielding the best
crops, be taken as the average standard of the near future, as they
should be, then it may be true in 1930, as it is now, that one fifth
of the arable land of this country when put under the plow will still
suffice for all existing demands, the remainder of our great domain
extending the promise of future abundance and welfare to the yet
greater numbers who will occupy the land a century hence.
I may add that in the course of a very friendly correspondence with
Sir William Crookes, while we are still at variance in our estimates
of the area which may be converted to the production of wheat in this
country without trenching upon any other product, we are wholly at an
agreement on a most material point. I quote from one of his letters:
"Under the present wasteful method of cultivation there will be in a
limited number of years an insufficient supply of wheat. Apply
artificial fertilizers judiciously, and the supply may be increased
indefinitely." I would only venture to add to the judgment of so
eminent a writer the words "or natural," to the end that the paragraph
should read, "Apply artificial or natural fertilizers judiciously, and
the supply can be increased indefinitely."
Many years ago I was asked among others, "What would be the next great
discovery of science or invention?" To which I replied, "A supply of
nitrogen at low cost." Has not that discovery been made in the recent
development of the functions of the bacteria which, living and dying
upon the leguminous plants, dissociate the nitrogen of the atmosphere
and convert it through the plant to the renovation of the soil? Is not
the invention of methods of nitrifying the soil by distributing the
germs of bacteria one of the most wonderful discoveries of science
ever yet attained? Can any one yet measure the potential of any given
area of land in any part of this country in the production of any one
of its great crops? That there is a limit may be admitted. Can any one
venture to say that any of our average crops yet approach beyond a
small fractional measure the true limit of production, whatever it may
be, either in cotton, maize, wheat, or any other product of the soil?
In this, as in many other developments of the theory of evolution, the
factor of mental energy, which is the prime factor in all material
production, may have been or is almost wholly ignored. We are ceasing
to treat the soil as a mine subject to exhaustion, but we have as yet
made only a beginning in treating it as an instrument of production
which will for a long period respond in its increasing product in
exact ratio to the mental energy which is applied to the cultivation
of the land.
FOOTNOTE:
[9] I have been permitted to review the detailed statements of the
accounts of one of the great enterprises which I have called the
manufacture of wheat on a large scale on various large farms,
separated one from another but under one control, aggregating more
than twenty thousand acres, in North Dakota. They are managed mainly
from a long distance through agents and foremen, therefore at a
relative disadvantage compared to a farmer owning his own land, acting
as his own foreman, and saving heavily in expense. Such farmers,
making no charge for their own time, are computed to have a cash
advantage of one dollar an acre.
A large part of this land has been cropped in wheat for twenty-four
years, one farm of six thousand acres showing an average in excess of
eighteen bushels per acre for the term of seventeen years. The details
of the product of other farms are not given, but this may be
considered a rule. Of course, this cropping can not be carried on
indefinitely. The land is now being allowed to rest, and other crops,
such as maize, oats, barley, millet, and timothy, are to some extent
being raised in rotation, but not to the extent in which individual
wheat farms are now passing into rotation, especially in Minnesota.
In this enterprise the manufacture of wheat is the main purpose, but
under the changed conditions on the small farms in Minnesota wheat is
becoming rather the cash or excess crop in a rotation of four; at
present, in North Dakota, wheat constitutes about three fourths the
total product.
In these accounts of this great farm are included all charges of every
name and nature except what might be called the rent of land: the
labor, the harvesting and thrashing, the general expense including the
foreman and all other charges; the office expenses, the taxes, the
insurance, and, when summer fallow is introduced, the cost of the
summer fallow. Suffice it that these figures for 1898--a year of high
charge for seed and one which yielded a fraction over the average in
product--prove conclusively an average of all charges of less than
five dollars an acre for the cost of the product. In different years
under these conditions the cost of the wheat varies from a little over
twenty cents to approximately thirty-five cents per bushel. The cost
of oats, which are cultivated with the wheat mainly for use on the
farms, ranges from ten to fifteen cents per bushel.
These are facts. The pending question in this discussion is, How much
land, occupied by owners but not now in use, is there in this section
of the country on which similar results can be attained, with better
results by individual farmers who possess mental energy and practical
skill? The figures given by the chiefs of the agricultural experiment
stations may rightly be taken in the solution of this question.
THE COMING OF THE CATBIRD.
BY SPENCER TROTTER.
In southeastern Pennsylvania there comes a day in February that brings
with it an indefinable sense of joyousness. A southerly wind wanders
up the Delaware with a touch of the spring in its air that quickens,
for the first time, the slumbering life. It is then that those
mysterious forces in the cells of living things begin their subtle
work--hidden in the dark, underground storehouses of plants and the
sluggish tissues of animals buried in their winter sleep. On such a
day the ground hog ventures from his burrow, some restless bee is
lured from the hive to wander disconsolate over bare fields, a snake
crawls from its hole to bask awhile in the sunshine, and one looks
instinctively for the first breaking of the earth that tells of the
early crocus and the peeping forth of daffodils. The southerly wind is
more apt than not to be a telltale, for with all its springtime
softness it is drawing toward some storm center, near or remote, that
will inevitably follow with rough weather in its sweep. The country
folk rightly call such a day a "weather breeder," and even the ground
hog knows its portent in the very sign of his shadow. Come as it will,
the day is really a day borrowed in advance from the spring, as though
to hearten one through all the dreary days that will follow and, in
starting the growing forces of vegetation, to make ready for the
season's coming.
With this forerunner of the year come the harbingers of the bird
migration. With the rise of the temperature to sixty or over, a
well-marked bird wave from the south spreads over the Delaware Valley.
On this balmy, springlike day we hear for the first time since
November the croaking of grackles as a loose flock wings overhead or
scatters among the tree tops. A few robins may show themselves, and
the mellow piping of bluebirds lends its sweet influence to the charm
of such a day. There is a sense of uncertain whereabouts in the
bluebird's note, a sort of hazy, in-the-air feeling that suggests sky
space. It does not seem to have the tangible element by which we can
locate the bird as in the voices of the robin and the song sparrow. It
is on such a day as this that song sparrows are first heard--cheery
ditties from the weather-beaten fences and the bare, brown tangle of
brier patches. The day may close lurid with the frayed streamers of
lofty cirrus clouds streaking across the sky--the vaporous overflow of
a coming storm--or a week of the same bright weather may continue with
the wind all the while blowing softly out of the south, but sooner or
later the inevitable winter storm must close this foretaste of the
spring.
A decided wave of rising temperature usually reaches the Delaware
Valley from the middle to the last of March, maintaining itself longer
than the February rise, and ushering in a well-marked bird wave. It is
about this time that the vanguard of the robin migration scatters over
the country. The grackles or crow blackbirds, which have been more or
less in evidence since their first appearance in February, begin
renovating the old nests or laying the foundations of new ones in the
tops of tall pines. The shrill call of the flicker sounds through the
woods, and before the end of the month one is sure to hear the
plaintive song of the field sparrow. This is about the time that the
spicebush shows its yellow blossoms through the grays and browns of
the spring underwoods, and the skunk cabbage unfolds its fresh, green
leafage in rank abundance along the boggy course of woodland rills. A
week earlier the streaked yellow and purple of its fleshy spathes
shows here and there in the oozy ground by the side of the folded leaf
spikes. It is just at this time, too, that one must go to the woods
for the first spring wild flowers--bloodroot, hepatica, anemones, and
the yellow dog-tooth violet--if one would get the real freshness of
spring into his soul. The crows, that all through the winter filed
away each evening in straggling lines of flight toward the distant
roost, have broken ranks, and go rambling in small groups through the
woods and over the fields of green winter wheat. Like the grackles,
they have thoughts of courtship and the more earnest business of
family cares. The liquid notes of meadow larks sound clear and sweet
in the greening fields and pastures, and small flocks of vociferous
killdeers scatter in wheeling flight over the newly plowed lands. In
tangle covers the rustle of dead leaves here and there tells of the
whereabouts of a flock of fox sparrows halting in their northward
pilgrimage. The pewee is back, inspecting her last year's house under
the span of some old bridge, and the melancholy voice of the dove is
borne on the air from the fence rows and cedars along the farther side
of fields.
After the 1st of April the tide of migration sets in with force, and
the earlier waves bring several species of summer birds--those that
come to build and breed in our woods--that rarely if ever make their
appearance before this time. It is an interesting fact that none of
the migrants that make their first appearance in April are ever found
in the Delaware Valley during the winter, though several, if not all,
of the species that come on the March waves are occasionally met with
in the winter months. It appears, further, that the winter quarters of
certain birds which are summer residents with us and some that are
transient, passing on to more northern breeding grounds, lie not so
very far to the south. If the last of March has been marked by warm
weather lapping over into the first days of April, then one may expect
soon to hear the familiar notes of the chipping sparrow from the
swelling branches of garden shrubbery and the trees about the lawn,
and a brown thrasher is sure to be heard volubly proclaiming his
arrival from some near-by tree top. Among the budding sprigs of
thickets the elusive chewink breaks into occasional fragments of song,
and from the red-blossomed maples and the jungle of pussy willows and
alders that fringe the meadow brook the metallic creaking notes of the
red-winged blackbirds sound not unpleasingly. This jargon of the
red-wing has a true vernal ring about it, suggesting the fresh green
of oozy bogs and the loosening up of sap.