It is in the way described that Americans have dealt with the soil opened to them by treaty or by purchase. And I have no hesitation in saying that posterity will decide, first, that it was both economically justified and politically fortunate that this should be done; and, secondly, that what has been done was accomplished with singular enterprise, prudence, patience, intelligence, and skill.

It will appear, from what has been said under the preceding titles, that I entertain a somewhat exalted opinion concerning American agriculture. Indeed I do. To me the achievements of those who in this new land have dealt with the soil, under the conditions so hurriedly and imperfectly recited, surpass the achievements of mankind in any other field of economic effort. With the labor power and capital power which we have had to expend during the past one hundred years, to have taken from the ground these hundreds, these thousands of millions of tons of food, fibers, and fuel for man's uses, leaving the soil no more exhausted than we find it to-day; and, meantime, to have built up, out of the current profits of this primitive agriculture, such a stupendous fund of permanent improvements, in provision for future needs and in preparation for a more advanced industry and a higher tillage, this certainly seems to be not only beyond the achievement, but beyond the power, of any other race of men.

The mighty production of the farm for one third of a century has come out of an agriculture having many faults. In a large degree there has been one-crop farming; crop rotation, as practiced, has often been too short and unwise; the grasses and leguminous forage crops have been neglected, domestic animals have not sufficiently entered into the farm economy, and many dairy cows have been kept at a loss. The fertilizers made on

1 From the report of Honorable James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture, for the year 1906.

the farm have been regarded as a nuisance in some regions; they have been wasted and misapplied by many farmers; 1 humus has not been plowed into the ground as generally as it should have been; and in many a place the unprotected soil has been washed into the streams.

1 In the Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture for 1902 Mr. George K. Holmes presents the following facts concerning the use of fertilizers:

There are still extensive regions in the United States where barn manure is considered a farm nuisance. In a county of Oregon the neighbor is welcome to haul away this manure, and that neighbor is likely to be a thrifty German with a large garden; in other Oregon counties the manure is burned. In a California county the manure is dumped into ravines; it goes to the creek in Oklahoma; it is hauled to a hole in the ground or put on one side of the field in Kansas; South Dakota farmers burn it to be rid of it, and sometimes burn it for fuel. In North Dakota farmers haul barn manure to piles and leave it there until it disappears; farmers in Missouri deposit it by the roadside, and in Idaho scrapers are used, and it is "often seen piled as high as a barn."

In many counties between the Mississippi river and the Pacific ocean farmers not only find barn manure a nuisance, but they have a grievance against it, claiming in South Dakota that it produces dog fennel, elsewhere that it produces other weeds, and in various counties that it has such an effect of "poisoning" the soil that farmers are afraid of it. The owner of a large California wheat ranch required a tenant last year to spread the barn manure of the ranch upon the wheat land, but the tenant, after doing so, set fire to the stubble and burned the manure.

In semi-arid regions barn manure needs to be used cautiously on unirrigated land; in the wheat lands of California it is more or less visible for four or five years after its application to the land. The practice of two hundred years ago survives in some parts of the South: cattle are penned upon the land to increase its fertility, and the pen is shifted as the owner desires.

In a large portion of the North Central States barn manure is removed to prevent accumulation and deposited upon the fields throughout the winter, to be plowed under in the spring. In the East it is allowed to accumulate until spring, when it is deposited upon the land just before plowing. The use of this fertilizer for top-dressing grass land is very common throughout the principal portion of the United States wherever it is used in considerable quantities.

Barn manure is more generally applied to corn than to any other crop, although a liberal application of it is made to tobacco, potatoes, and vegetables. Commercial fertilizer is liberally used in cotton production, in the more intensive agriculture of fruit and vegetable raising, and in growing small grains, to which it is applied with a seeder at time of seeding. The use of barn manure is greatest in the East, while commercial fertilizers have the greatest use in the cotton belt. The use of any kind of barn or commercial fertilizer is more and more sporadic westward from Indiana, and commercial fertilizer is hardly anywhere seen west of the Mississippi river except on vegetable and fruit farms. - ED.

Economic Justification

This, in few words, is the historic story of agriculture in a new country; yet the course of agriculture in this country, bad as it may seem in its unscientific aspect, has had large economic justification. While pioneers, poor and in debt, are establishing themselves they have no capital, even if they have the knowledge with which to carry on agriculture to the satisfaction of the critic. They must have buildings, machinery, and live stock, even at the expense of the soil.

Millions upon millions of acres of fresh land have been coming into production faster than domestic consumption has required, and, at times, beyond the takings of importing countries. For many years the farmer was threatened with forty-cent wheat, twenty-cent corn, and five-cent cotton, and at times he was face to face with the hard conditions implied in these destructive prices. A more scientific agriculture would have raised wheat that no one wanted to eat, corn to store on the farm and perhaps eventually to be used for fuel, and cotton not worth the picking.

Larger Production Indicated

So it has happened, with reason, that the production per acre has been low; but there is no likelihood that low production is fixed and that the farmer must continue his extensive system. When consumption demands and when prices sustain, the farmer will respond. The doors of knowledge and example are opening wider to him.

There is abundant information concerning crop rotation,1 the dependence of high production upon the domestic animals, concerning grasses, clover, and alfalfa, and concerning the mixing.

In the Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture for 1902 Mr. George K. Holmes gives the following account of the present practice in the rotation of crops: Little systematic rotation of crops is found in this country. One-crop farming is still practiced in some parts, as corn on bottom land or cotton in the South, corn or wheat in the North Central States and the Southwest, and wheat on the Pacific coast. The constant cropping of the "corn bottoms" of the South and of the North Central States is sustained to some extent by the annual deposit

of vegetable matter with the soil. Systems of farm management and soil treatment have assumed greater importance in their effect upon production; and there is the breeding of plants, which alone can multiply production so as to glut the market.

Multiplication of the Cotton Crop

If there were need to do so, the cotton farmer and planter could double the present crop of two fifths of a bale per acre, and the feat would need nothing more than demonstrated and well-understood principles of farm management. It would be no work of magic to multiply the production of cotton per acre by three and get a bale and a quarter; and, besides this, the

from freshets. The cotton land receives commercial fertilizer, and much of it is rested every few years, but is in a low condition of fertility. The continuity of wheat or corn in the North Central and Pacific States is broken by complete rest in many counties, and the soil is becoming less productive. Rest for the soil is not a common practice in the North Central States; the extension of crop rotation is preventing this.

Haphazard is a mild word to describe the impression given by the reports of correspondents with regard to the rotation of crops in many counties and parts of counties of the United States. Although there may be an annual change of crop on the same land, this change is so uncertain, so unsystematic, that at first it seems impossible to establish order out of the chaotic mass of particulars. Some fundamentals may be discerned, however, in a broadly general sense.

Throughout the region north of the cotton belt there is a three-crop rotation which may be regarded as a system with innumerable variations. These crops are corn, small grain (wheat, oats, barley, rye), and grass or legumes; and the period covered by the rotation in some of its variations is commonly four or five years and not infrequently extends to eight or ten or more years, the length of the period depending mostly upon the ability of the grass or legumes to remain productive. Sooner or later most of the tillable land that is not bottom land or is not devoted to one crop, fruit or vegetables, passes through this rotation, but often with interruptions or the admixture of other crops in the effort to adapt the products to markets, prices, soil, weather, and the special or general objects of farming.. In some regions which produce considerable tobacco, potatoes, or beans, a portion of the land that would otherwise be given to corn may be given to one of these crops in this general rotation.

This fundamental rotation north of the cotton belt will be better understood by noticing the variations presented in the list of leading rotations contained in this paper.

In the cotton belt, as far as any systematic rotation of crops is discoverable, it is cotton and corn, but this is subject to the repetition of cotton because of larger area than corn, to the resting of the soil for a year, to the inclusion of

planter has more than three times the present actual acreage in cotton readily available and awaiting his use. More than the present area of cotton can thus be grown in a three-year crop rotation when the needs of the world demand it.

Increase of Corn

In accordance with principles demonstrated, known, and applicable, hints of which have been given, the corn crop per acre can be increased by one half within a quarter of a century, and without any pretense that the limit has been reached. No wizard's services are needed for this, but just education.

The same statement is applicable to wheat. There is no sensible reason why half as much more wheat may not be had from an acre within less than a generation of time. It is only a question of knowledge, of education, of cultural system, and of farm management, all of which learning is and will be at the service of the farmer as he needs it.

cowpeas, and of various small crops of sorghum, oats, sweet potatoes, etc., in the course of several years, during which the primary rotation may have occurred two or three times. Variations of the primary cotton rotation will be observed in the subsequent list of leading rotations.

In the arid and semi-arid regions, which comprise that part of the country lying west of the one hundredth meridian, except a border on the Pacific ocean, the crop rotation, outside of vegetable and fruit production, tends to maintain the growth of alfalfa as long as possible. In the reseeding year wheat or other small grain is sown. There is, however, considerable resting of land throughout this entire region as a poor substitute for renewing the fertility of the land by the use of alfalfa, for alfalfa is not grown where grain is the chief product. In western Oregon and Washington, where the rainfall permits the introduction of grasses, the rotation chiefly includes only small grains and grasses, and in some counties only the small grains.

For California it is impossible to arrive at a fundamental crop rotation on account of radical differences in soil, water supply, and climate. The reports received show the practices to be almost as numerous as the counties, and indeed some counties have several practices in different parts. With regard to wheat and barley the general practice is that the land rests every second or third year, in which it produces nothing but weeds and wild oats. Some Pacific Coast rotations are given in the list of leading rotations. - ED.