March 14, 1907.
Mr. Percy Johnston,
Heart-of-Egypt, Ill.
MY DEAR Friend:—We were delighted to receive your interesting letter of March 2, describing the Farmer's Institute. I have been to two such meetings in Virginia, but they are devoted to fruit and truck and dairying, and no one seems to know much about our soils. I appreciate more and more every year the absolute knowledge you helped me to secure concerning Westover, where we had been working in the dark for two centuries. I am sure you will succeed on Poorland Farm,—just as confident as any one can be in advance of actual achievement; and I expect to see the time when Richland Farm will be a more appropriate name.
I only wish you could see my alfalfa. I have been seeding more every year and now have sixty acres. It has come through winter in fine condition and it will be a fine sight by Easter. Here's a standing invitation to take Easter dinner with us, or any other dinner, for that matter, if you ever come East.
I am planning to sow about forty acres more alfalfa this year. A writer for the _Breeder's Gazette _visited us last summer, and he said some of our alfalfa was as good as any he had ever seen in California. He said ground limestone was plainly what we need for alfalfa at Westover, but he thought some phosphorus would also help on the less rolling areas, where the alfalfa is not so good as where you found more phosphorus.
Lime and raw rock phosphate make the difference between clover and no clover.
I can get ground limestone for $2.90 a ton now, delivered at Blue Mound in bulk in carload lots. We are hoping to get it still lower, and I think we will, for some of the big lime manufacturers, such as the company at Riverton, are making plans to furnish ground limestone; and the railroad companies are likely to make better rates, or the State will do so for them.
It is truly a lamentable situation, when our hills and mountains are full of all sorts of limestone, and our exhausted lands are crying for that more than anything else. We understand, even better than you, that everybody is poor in a country where the land is poor; and it should be to the greatest interest of the railroad companies as well as to all other industries, to unite in an effort to make it possible for every landowner to apply large amounts of limestone to his land,—the more the better,—and no one should expect any large profit from the business; but wait till the benefit is produced on the land,—wait till the farmer has his increased crops, and some money from the sale of those crops. Then the railroads can make profit hauling those crops to market and hauling back the necessary supplies, and even the luxuries, which the farmer's money will enable him to buy and pay for. Then the factory wheels will turn; for, as you told us, the Secretary of Agriculture reports that eighty-six per cent. of all the manufactured products are made from agricultural raw materials.
There is no danger but what the railroads and manufacturers and commercial people will get their share out of the produce from the farms; but it is absolutely sure that, when the farms fail to produce, then there is no profit for any of them, and the last man to starve out will be the farmer himself, for he can live on what he raises even though he has nothing left to sell.
We are all well. My son Charles is still bookkeeping for a Richmond firm, but he is becoming greatly interested in my alfalfa, and says he sometimes wishes he had taken an agricultural course instead of the literary at college. His grandmother says she reckons the agricultural college could give him about all the literature he needs keeping books for a hides and tallow wholesale company; and I am coming to believe that she is about right. I still remember that the dative of indirect object is used with most Latin verbs compounded with _ad, ante, con, in, inter, ob, post, pre, pro, sub, _and _super, _and sometimes _circum; _but it would have been just as easy for me to have learned forty years ago that the essential elements of plant food are carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen; nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium; magnesium, calcium, iron and sulfur; and possibly chlorin; and I am sure that the culture of Greek roots and a knowledge of Latin compounds have been of less value to me during the forty years than the culture of alfalfa roots and even a meager knowledge of plant-food compounds have been during the last three years.
Adelaide is teaching; Frank is in the academy; and the younger children are all in school.
We shall always be glad to hear from you.
Very respectfully yours,
"That is an exceptionally good letter," said Mrs. Johnson, as Percy finished reading.
"Not for Mr. West," he replied. "His letters are always good, always helpful and encouraging, almost an inspiration to me. Mr. West is in many ways a very exceptional man. If he had not been tied down all his life to a so-called worn-out farm of a thousand acres, he might just as well have been the Governor of the State. Even in spite of himself he has been practically forced to accept some very responsible public offices, but the financial sacrifice was too great to permit his retaining them very long. I never realized until I was nearly through college that the trustees of our own University devoted a large amount of time to that public service with no financial remuneration whatever. They are merely reimbursed for their actual and necessary travelling expenses."
"Well, if I were a young man about your age, this letter would be an inspiration to me," said his mother.
"You mean his suggestion about changing the name of our farm?"
"No, I mean his possible suggestion about changing the name of his daughter."
Percy was silent.
"How can I tell anything from your blank face? Why do you not speak?"
"You will have to show me," said Percy.
"Will you accept his invitation?"
"Oh, Mr. West always closes his letters with an invitation for me to visit them if I ever come East. There is nothing exceptional or unusual in that."
"The letter is very exceptional," she repeated, "insomuch that if there is no understanding there is no misunderstanding, and if there is some misunderstanding there was no intention. When Mrs. Barton says: 'Do come over when you can,' there is no invitation intended and no acceptance expected; but when Mrs. McKnight says: 'Can't you and your son come over and take supper with us Thursday evening,'—well that is an invitation to come. In the case of Mr. West's letter, perhaps you had an invitation to spend the Easter vacation at Westover when his daughter will be at home,—and perhaps not."
Percy was silent and his mother quietly waited.
"In any case," he said, "I cannot afford to go this spring. We never were so short of funds. I almost begrudged the railroad fare I paid to go to the Institute."
"I have agreed to agree with you regarding the matter of hiring more help on the farm if you need it," she said; "for it is easily possible to lose by saving. There are some things which should never be influenced by financial considerations. It is more than three years since your Eastern trip. You need a rest and a change. It would be entirely commonplace for you to spend the Easter time in Virginia. You ought to see the country in the spring; and you ought especially to be interested in Mr. West's sixty acres of alfalfa. Expectations are always followed either by realization or by disappointment, either of which my noble son can bear."
Her fingers passed through his hair as she kissed his forehead.
"The only question is, whether you would enjoy a visit to Westover," she continued. "You have insisted that the Winterbine deposit remain in my name, but I have written and signed a check against that reserve for $100, and you have only to fill in the date and draw the amount at the County Seat whenever you wish. If you go, express my regards to the ladies, and especially remember me to the grandmother."
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 readThe 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 hisGeorgics:
"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,