CHAPTER XXXVI
HARD TIMES

WHEN Percy and his mother reached Poorland Farm in March they found a small frame house needing only shingles, paint, and paper to make it a fairly comfortable home, until they should be able to add such conveniences as Percy knew could be installed in the country as well as in the city. From the sale of corn and some other produce they were able to add to the residue of $1,840, which represented the difference between the cost of three hundred and twenty acres in Egypt and the selling price of forty acres in the corn belt. An even $3,000 was left in the savings bank at Winterbine.

"If we can live," said Percy, "just as the other 'Egyptians' must live, and save our $3,000 for limestone and phosphate, I believe we shall win out. Through the efforts of the Agricultural College and the Governor of the State the convicts in the Southern Illinois Penitentiary have been put to quarrying stone, and large crushers and grinders have been installed, and the State Board of Prison Industries is already beginning to ship ground limestone direct to farmers at sixty cents a ton in bulk in box cars. The entire Illinois Freight Association gave an audience to the Warden of the Penitentiary and representatives from the Agricultural College and a uniform freight rate has been granted of one-half cent per ton per mile. This will enable us to secure ground limestone delivered at Heart-of-Egypt for $1.22-1/2 per ton.

"Now, to apply five tons per acre on two hundred and forty acres will require one thousand two hundred tons and that will cost us $1,570 in cash, less perhaps the $70, which we save on roads and the untreated check strips which I want to leave. To apply one ton of phosphate per acre to the same six fields will cost about $1,600. Of course, I shall not begin to apply phosphate until after I have applied the limestone and get some clover or manure to mix with the phosphate when I plow it under; and I hope with the help of the limestone we shall get some clover and some increase in the other crops. In any case the $3,000 and interest we will get for what we can leave in the bank during the six or eight years it will take to get the rotation and treatment under way will pay for the initial cost of the first applications of both limestone and phosphate; and we shall hope that by that time the farm will bring us something more than a living."

The carload of effects shipped from Winterbine to Heart-of-Egypt included two horses, a cow, a few breeding hogs, and some chickens; also a supply of corn and oats sufficient for the summer's feed grain.

After the expenses of shipping were paid, less than $350 were deposited in the bank at the County Seat. Of this $250 were used for the purchase of another team. Hay was bought from a neighbor and some old hay that had been discarded by the balers, who had purchased, baled, and sold the previous hay crop from Poorland Farm, Percy gathered up and saved for bedding.

He plowed forty acres of the land that had not been cropped for five years, and, after some serious delays on account of wet weather, planted the field in corn, using the Champion White Pearl variety, be cause the Experiment Station had found it to be one of the best varieties for poor land.

"I wouldn't plant that corn if you would give me the seed," a neighbor had said to him. "See how big the cob is; and the tip is not well filled out, and there is too much space between the rows. I tell you there's too much cob in it for me. I want to raise corn and not corn cob."

"It certainly is not a good show ear," said Percy, "but what I want most is bushels of shelled corn per acre. Perhaps these big kernels will help to give the young plant a good start, and perhaps the piece of cob extending from the tip will make room for more kernels if the soil can be built up so as to furnish the plant food to make them. The cob is large but it is covered with grains all the way around; and, if those kernels of corn were putty, we could mash them down a little and have less space between the rows, but it would make no more corn on the ear. However, my chief reason for planting the Champion White Pearl is that this variety has produced more shelled corn per acre than any other in the University experiments on the gray prairie soil of 'Egypt.'"

There were only sixteen acres of corn grown on the entire farm in 1903 and this yielded thirteen bushels per acre, as Percy learned from the share of the crop received by the previous landowner.

In 1904 the Champion White Pearl yielded twenty bushels per acre, as nearly as could be determined by weighing the corn from a few shocks on a small truck scale Percy had brought from the north. He numbered his six forty-acre fields from one to six. Forty No. 7 was occupied by twelve acres of apple orchard, eight acres of pasture, and twenty acres of old meadow. By getting eighty rods of fencing it was possible to include twenty-eight acres in the pasture, although one hundred and ninety-two rods of fencing had been required to surround the eight-acre pasture. The remainder of the farm was in patches, including about fifteen acres on one corner crossed by a little valley and covered with trees, a tract which Percy and his mother treasured above any of the forty-acre fields. While the week was always filled with work, there were many hours of real pleasure found in the wood's pasture on the Sunday afternoons.

Forty No. I was left to "lie out," and No. 2 raised only twelve acres of cowpeas. No. 3 was plowed during the summer and seeded to timothy in the early fall. No. 4 was in corn and Nos. 5 and 6 were left in meadow, two patches of nine and sixteen acres previously in cowpeas and corn having been seeded to timothy in order, as Percy said, to " square out " the forty-acre fields. About fifty acres of land were cut over for about sixteen tons of hay. The corn was all put in shock, and the fodder as well as the grain used for feed, the refuse from the fodder and poor hay serving as bedding. About three tons of cowpea hay of excellent quality were secured from the twelve acres, and fifty barrels of apples were put in storage.

Another cow and eight calves were bought, and during the winter, some butter, two small bunches of the last spring's pigs, and the apple crop were sold. A few eggs had been sold almost every week since the previous March.

In 1905 No. 1 was rented for corn on shares and produced about six hundred bushels of which Percy received one-third. No. 2 yielded four hundred and eighty-four bushels of oats. No. 3 produced fourteen tons of poor hay. No. 4 was "rested" and prepared for wheat, ground limestone having been applied. No. 5 was fall-plowed from old meadow and well prepared and planted to corn in good time; but, after the second cultivation, heavy rains set in and continued until the corn was seriously damaged on the flat areas of the field, the more so as he had not fully understood the importance of keeping furrows open with outlets at the head-lands through which the excess surface water could pass off quickly under such weather conditions. Patches of the field aggregating at least five acres were so poorly surface drained that the corn was "drowned out," and fifteen acres more were so wet as to greatly injure the crop. However, on the better drained parts of the field where the corn was given further cultivation the yield was good and about 1,000 bushels of sound corn were gathered from the forty acres.

A mixture of timothy, redtop and weeds was cut for hay on No. 6, the yield being better than half a ton per acre.

The apples were a fair crop, and the total sales from that crop amounted to $750, but about half of this had been expended for trimming and spraying the trees, a spraying outfit, barrels, picking, packing, freight and cold storage. A good bunch of hogs were sold.

Another year passed. Oats were grown on No. 1 and on part of No. 2, yielding eleven bushels per acre.

No. 3 yielded one-third of a ton of hay per acre.

Wheat was grown on No. 4, and clover, the first the land had known in many years, if ever, was seeded in the spring,--twenty acres of red clover and twenty of alsike.

The fifty-four acres of wheat, including fourteen acres on No. 2, yielded seven and one-half bushels per acre. Soy beans were planted on No. 5, but wet weather seriously interferred and only part of the field was cut for hay. Limestone was applied, but heavy continued rains prevented the seeding of wheat.

No. 6 produced about twenty-seven bushels per acre of corn.

Two lots of hogs were sold for about $800, and some young steers increased the receipts by nearly $100.

Mrs. Johnston continued to buy the groceries with eggs and butter; but it was necessary to buy some hay, and the labor bill was heavy.

No. 5 joined the twenty-eight acre pasture and on two other sides it joined neighbors' farms where line fences were up, and on the other side lay No. 4.

Percy was trying to get ready to pasture the clover on No. 4, and a mile of new fencing was required. The materials were bought and the fence built, and when finished it also completed the fencing required to enclose No. 5. The twenty-eight acre pasture was inadequate for sixteen head of cattle and the young stock was kept in a hired pasture. Unless he could produce more feed, Percy saw that the farm would soon be overstocked, for some colts were growing and eight cows were now giving milk.

His hope was in the clover, but as the fall came on the red clover was found to have failed almost completely, and the alsike was one-half a stand. As the red clover had been seeded on the unlimed strip there was no way of knowing whether the limestone had even benefited the alsike. The neighbors had "seen just as good clover without putting on any of that stuff."

There were no apples, but the spraying had cost as much as ever, and some team work had been hired.

Three years of the hardest work; limestone on two forties, but only twenty acres of poor clover on one and no wheat seeded on the other. The neighbors "knew the clover would winter kill." The bills for pasturing amounted to as much as the butter had brought; for the twenty-eight-acre pasture had been very poor. The feed for the cows for winter consisted of corn fodder, straw and poor hay, and not enough of that.

They had to do it--draw $150 from the Winterbine reserve, besides what had been used for limestone. Part of it must go for clover seed, for clover must be seeded before it could be grown. The small barn must also be enlarged, but with the least possible expense.

It was February. Wet snow, water, and almost bottomless mud covered the earth. With four horses on the wagon, Percy had worked nearly all day bringing in two "jags" of poor hay from the stack in the field. It was all the little mow would hold.

He had finished the chores late and came in with the milk.

"Put on some dry clothes and your new shoes," said his mother, "while I strain the milk and take up the supper. There is a letter on the table. I hardly see how the mail man gets along through these roads. They must be worse than George Rogers Clark found on his trip from Kaskaskia to Vincennes. They say his route passed across only a few miles from the present site of Heart-of-Egypt. I suppose the letter is from Mr. West."

Percy finished washing his hands, and opened the letter. Two cards fell to the table as he drew the letter from the envelope.

He picked up one of the cards, and read it aloud to his mother:

Mr. and Mrs. Strongworth Barstow
At home after March I, 1907
1422 College Avenue
Raleigh, N. C.

"With Grandma's Compliments," was penciled across the top of the card. Percy glanced at the other card and read the plain lines:

Announce the marriage of their daughter

Did his eyes blurr? He laid the one card over the other, scanned Mr. West's letter hurriedly, replaced it with the cards in the envelope, and laid the letter at his mother's plate.

Percy replaced his rubber boots with shoes, and his wet, heavy coat with a dry one.

"You remember the letter I had from the College?" he asked, as he took his seat at the table.

"Yes, I remember," she replied, " but the Institute was to begin to-day."

"I know," said Percy, "but Hoard and Terry both speak to- morrow,--Terry in the morning and the Governor in the afternoon, and they are the men the Professor especially wanted me to hear, if I could. I think I'll 'phone to Bronson's and ask Roscoe to come over and do the chores to-morrow noon. I can get back by nine to-morrow night."

"But, Dear, how in the world can you get to Olney to hear Mr. Terry speak to-morrow morning?"

"There is a train east about eight o'clock," he replied. "Of course the roads are too awful to think of driving to the station, especially since the mares ought not to be used much. I put four on the wagon to-day and tried to be as careful as possible but it does not seem right to use them. I can manage all right. I will get up a little early in the morning and get things in shape so I can leave here by daylight and I am sure I can make the B. & O. station by eight o'clock easily. I will wear my rubber boots and carry my shoes in a bundle. I can change at the depot and put my boots on again when I get back there at seven at night. If it clears up, I will have the moon to help coming home."

But, Percy, you do not mean to walk five miles and back through all this mud and water?"

"I wish you would not worry, Mother. There is grass along the sides most of the way, and I am used to the mud and water. I will spy out the best track as I go in the morning and just follow my own trail coming back."

"Then it is time we were asleep," replied the mother.




CHAPTER XXXVII
HARDER TIMES

THE State Superintendent of Farmers' Institutes called the meeting to order soon after Percy entered the Opera House at Olney about ten o'clock the next morning.

"Divine blessing will be invoked by Doctor T. E. Sisson, pastor of the First Methodist Church of Olney:"

"Oh, Thou, whose presence bright all space doth occupy and all motion guide, all life impart, we come this morning in the capacity of this Farmers' Institute to thank thee for Thy mercies and for Thy blessings, and to invoke Thy presence and Thy continued favor. As Thou with Thy presence hast surrounded all forms of creation and all stages of being with the providences of welfare and development and grace, so we pray, our Father, for guidance through the sessions of this institute, for the providences of Thy love and Thy wisdom divine as it reveals itself in the open field, in the orchard, in the garden, bringing forth those things which replenish the earth with food and fill the mouths of our hungry ones with bread.

"We thank Thee for this larger knowledge which has come to the minds of men, because they have been learning to study Thy works and to walk closer to Thee. Wilt Thou, Heavenly Father, continue to enlighten this body of men and women that are represented in this great field of the world's busy hive so that the starving millions of the world, now in our cities rioting for bread, and in the vast nations where they are crying for food, may be fed. We pray Thee, reveal such improvement of knowledge to these who are willing to get close to Thee to learn Thy secrets and know Thy wisdom, as that unto all shall be given plenty, for replenishing our physical needs. And help us to know, our Father, as we learn Thy will and seek to do Thy will and live in the higher courts of knowledge and wider circles of thought, so shall God reveal himself unto us.

"Our Father, we thank Thee for all the developments and great sources of utility that come through the means of this institute in the development of the resources of this country, this great State and adjoining states through the length and breadth of this favored nation. We pray, Heavenly Father, while studying all these replenishments and seeking to defend them from the inroads of evil, of the rust and the mildew and the worm, we pray also for the beautiful homes, for the souls of the children given to our homes, that we may study their mental and spiritual being in such a way as shall keep all harm and evil and wrong from this life of ours, and so to work in the field of Thy providences, revealed in hand and mind and heart and relationships, of school and church and state and farm, and all the activities of this life's great work, as that good shall be our inheritance.

"We pray Thee, Heavenly Father, to be with the officers of this institute. Give Thy strength, Thy presence, and Thy discernment to these who participate in the work, the membership and onlookers, and those who come to learn. We pray Thee, give us the revelation of Thy wisdom to replenish and build up every human family, and to Thee all praise shall be given to-day for this blessing and for Thy continued favor; and not only to-day but to-morrow and the day after and through all eternity the praise shall be Thine, in the name of Him who came into this world to give us the life of the knowledge of God. Amen."

"It may be," said the Chairman, "that a State Farmers' Institute sometimes exercises a little arbitrary power in selecting subjects we want to speak of. I think county institutes might adopt the same plan to advantage, and assign the topic they wish discussed.

"The topic assigned our speaker to-day is 'What I did and how I did it.' It may sound egotistical, but I want to relieve the speaker of that imputation, because the subject was selected by the Institute.

"Allow me to present Mr. Terry, who needs no introduction to an audience of American farmers:"

Mr. Terry began to speak:

"Thirty-six years ago last fall," he said, "my wife and I bought and moved onto the farm where we now reside. We went on there in debt $3,700, on which we had to pay seven per cent. interest. I had one horse, an old one, and it had the heaves, a one-horse harness, and a one-horse wagon, three tillage implements, and nine cows that were paid for; and a wife and two babies, but no money. Now that was the condition in which we started on this farm, thirty-six years ago, in debt heavily, and no money; but that is not the worst of it. If it had been as good soil as you have in some parts of this State, we should have been all right. How about the soil? For sixty years farmers had been running it down until it could scarcely produce anything. We had a tenant on the place one year, before we could arrange to move on, after we got it. They got eight bushels of wheat per acre, and he said to me, 'That is a pretty good yield, don't you think, for this old farm?' Oh, friends, I didn't think so;--never ought to have bought this farm;--didn't know any better,--born and brought up in town, my father a minister, and I thought a farm was a farm. But I learned some things after awhile. That tenant mowed over probably forty acres of land. (We originally bought one hundred and twenty-five.) He put the hay in the barn. It measured twelve tons. Half of that was weeds. Most of the hay he cut down in a swale. There wasn't anything worth considering on the upland. That was the condition of the land.

"How about the buildings? The house had been used about sixty years, an old story-and-a-half house. Dilapidated, oh, my! Every time the rain came, we had to take every pan upstairs and set it to catch the water. We did not have any money to put on more shingles. It was out of the question, we couldn't do it. How about the dooryard? It was a cow yard. They used it for a milking yard, for years and years. You can imagine how it looked. The barn was in such condition that cattle were just as well off outdoors as in. The roof leaked terribly. The tenants had burned up the doors and any boards they could take off easily. They were too lazy to take off any that came off hard. They burned all the fences in reach.

"Now friends, that was the farm we moved onto and the condition it was in. Some of you will know we saw some pretty hard times for a while. Time and again I was obliged to take my team, after we got two horses (the second I borrowed of a relative, it was the only way I could get one), and go to town to do some little job hauling to get some money to get something to eat. That is the way we started farming. I remember, after three or four years, meeting Dr. W. I. Chamberlain. Some of you know him. He said: 'Terry, if you should get a new hat, there wouldn't anybody know you. Your clothes wear like the children of Israel's.' They had to wear. No one knew how hard up we were. It was not best to let them know. That money was borrowed of a friend in Detroit, secured on a life insurance policy. We did not let anybody know how hard up we really were. My wife rode to town (to church when she went), in the same wagon we hauled out manure in, for a time. Time and again she had been to town when she said she could not do without something any longer and came back without it. Credit was good. We could have bought it. We didn't dare to.

"Now, friends, a dozen years from the time we started on that farm, under these circumstances, we were getting from one hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty bushels of merchantable potatoes per acre right along--not a single year, but on the average--varying, of course, somewhat with the season. We were getting from four to five tons of clover hay in a season, from two cuttings, of course, per acre. We were getting from thirty-three to thirty-eight bushels of wheat per acre, not one year, but for five years we averaged thirty-five bushels per acre, and right on that same farm. No fertility had been brought on to it, practically, from the outside. A man without any money, in debt for the land $3,700, was able to do this. Now, how did he do it? That is the question I have been asked to talk upon. I have told you briefly something like what we have accomplished. I might say, further, the old house I told you that we lived in for fourteen years while we were building up the fertility of this soil, we sold for $10, after we got through with it. It is now a horse barn on the farm of our next neighbor and has been covered over.

"Eleven years from the time we started we paid the last $500 of our debt, all dug out of that farm, not $25 from any other source. Thirteen years from the time we started, we carried off the first prize of $50 offered by the State Board of Agriculture of Ohio, for the best detailed report of the best and most profitably managed small farm in the state,--only thirteen years from the time we started on that rundown land, and no fertility brought from the outside; without any money; and meanwhile we had to live.

"Now I had arranged with the tenant the first year, before we went on there, to seed down a certain field. It had been under the plow for some time. I wanted it seeded so I could have some land to mow and he seeded half of it. It was only a little lot, about five acres. He seeded half with timothy and left the other half. That was his way of doing things, anyway. When we moved onto the farm later I naturally wanted to finish that seeding and get that field in some sort of shape for mowing. I went to my next neighbor, who lives there yet, and asked him what I had better use. I didn't know anything, practitically, about farming, and he advised me to try some clover seed. He said: 'So far as I know, none was ever sown on that farm. They have sowed timothy everlastingly, everybody, because it is cheap. I knew timothy wouldn't grow there to amount to anything If I were in your place I would try some clover.'

"I got the land prepared and sowed that clover alone, so as to give it a chance. I did have sense enough to mow off the weeds when they got six or eight or ten inches high perhaps, so that the clover could have a little better chance to grow. It happened to be a very wet season. I remember that distinctly. This was a lot near to the barn. I suppose what little manure they had hauled out had been mostly put on this land. With these favoring conditions the result was fairly good. Of course not half what we got later, but we got quite a little clover and when I came to mow it, and to mow that timothy at the other end, I could see I could draw the rake two or three times as far in the timothy as in the clover. There was more clover on an acre. A load of timothy would go in and a load of clover. When I fed it to the cows in winter I noticed when feeding clover for a number of days they gave more milk. I didn't know why. I don't know as anybody knew why then. There wasn't an experiment station in the land. We were following our own notions. But the cows gave more milk; I could see that plainly.

"A little later I had an experiment forced on me by accident. I tell you just how it came about. It resulted in putting a good many thousands in our pockets and I hope millions in the pockets of the farmers of America. Later I wanted to plant corn on this field, and, as I wanted to grow just as good corn as I could, I got out what manure we saved and put it on the land preparing for plowing. I knew there wouldn't be more than half enough to go over the field. I said to myself, if there was any good corn, I would like it next to the road where people would see it. Wouldn't any of you do it? I didn't have a dollar to hire any help. I paid one dollar that year for help, and it was awful hard to get that dollar. I began spreading that manure next to the road. The back half of the field was nearly out of sight. When I got half way back there wasn't any manure left and the back half didn't get any. Now it so happened that the timothy was on the front end of the field, and it got the manure. The clover on the back half didn't get any. It came about in the simple way I told you of. Naturally I didn't expect much corn where I hadn't put any manure, but what was my surprise to find it was just about as good on that clover end of the field without any dressing as on the timothy end with what I had been able to put on. It is only right I should say there wasn't much of the manure It was poor in quality because we couldn't get grain for the cows when we couldn't get enough for ourselves to eat. There wasn't much manure and it was pretty poor, but such as it was that was the result. More hay to the acre, better hay, increased fertility, some way, by growing this clover!

"Now let us go back a little. I think it was the second spring after we moved onto the place that I happened to be crossing the farm of my next neighbor, Mr. Holcombe, now dead. I found him plowing. He had been around a piece of land, I should judge five acres, half a dozen times. He was sitting on the plow, tired out,--too old to work anyway. He said, 'I wish you would take this land and put in some crop on the shares; I want to get rid of the work; I can't do it, and would like to let you have it in some way. All I want is that it should be left so I can seed it down in the fall again.'

"It was an old piece of sod he had mowed in the old eastern way until it wouldn't grow anything any longer. I don't suppose he got a quarter of a ton of hay to the acre. He wanted it plowed so he could re-seed it. I didn't know the value of the land, but, foolishly perhaps, as most people thought, offered him five dollars an acre for the use of it. I hadn't enough to do at home. I didn't have my land in shape so I could do much. We were working along as fast as we could. I thought I could do well if I had this job, and could perhaps make something off it. He agreed to it.

"I went home and got my team and plow, and finished the plowing. I remember making those furrows narrow and turning the ground well, a little deeper than it had been plowed before. I didn't realize what I was doing, then. I simply had been brought up to do my work well. I thought I was doing a good job, that was all. When I was through plowing I got my old harrow, a spike-tooth, and harrowed the ground. I had a roller. They were manufactured in our town. The firm bursted and I had a chance to buy one very cheap. I had a roller, harrow, and plow. That was all the tillage implements. The harrow had moved the lumps around a little. I ran the roller over the lumps; then harrowed, rolled, and harrowed. When the harrow would not take hold, I put a plank across and rode on it. I worked that land alternately until I had the surface as fine and nice as I could make it, two or three inches deep. The harrow would not take hold any longer and I had to quit. By and by a rain came. I didn't know anything about how to till land,--this spring fallow business--but I happened to hit it right. After it rained, I said that harrow will take hold better now. I loaded the harrow and got on it, and tore that ground up three or four inches deep.

"The harrow teeth were sharp. I harrowed and rolled it and my neighbor said, 'Terry, you are ruining that land, it will never grow anything any more, it will all blow away.' I reminded him of his bargain; I should raise what I pleased and take the crop home. Every little while, I can't remember how often, I would go over and harrow and roll that land. I probably plowed it the first week in April. For two months that was a sort of savings bank for my work. I would run over and work that land, occasionally, until, about the first week in June, I had it prepared just as mellow and fine and nice as it was possible to make it. It was nice enough for flower seeds."

"I builded better then than I knew. I had no idea what the result was going to be. When it was all ready, I sowed Hungarian grass seed. I wish you could have seen the crop. It grew four and a half or five feet high, as thick as it could stand on the land. I believe if I had thrown my straw hat, it would have staid on the top. It was enormous for that land. I had four big loads to the acre. You know what you can put on a load of Hungarian. When I went by the owner's house with those loads and took them to our barn, he was out there and he looked awfully sour. That man, to my knowledge, had never grown half as much to the acre since I had known of his being on the land, probably never more than one-third as much. Old run-out timothy sod; no manure, no fertilizer, nothing but the work, --this spring fallowing. I enjoyed the matter more, because he had told some of the neighbors he had got the start of that town fellow; I would never see five dollars an acre back, out of the land. That was his opinion of what I could raise.

"Hay was hay that fall, after a dry season. We live in a dairy section. The cows were there and had to be fed. I got $18 a ton for that hay in our barn, something like $70 per acre. I think the laugh was on the other side. That was my first awakening, along this line of tillage. Didn't know how it came about, didn't know anything about the fertility locked up in the soil, just the plain facts. I did so and so, and got such and such results. The next year Charlie Harlow, still living there, said, 'I wish you would put in some Hungarian for me this spring.' I said, 'What part of the crop?--I should want two-thirds.' He said he had an offer for half. I said, 'Then let him have it.' He replied, 'One- third of what you will raise is more than half of what he will raise.' He saw what I did on his brother-in-law's farm.

"The following year I had a piece of land ready to grow corn, I had cleared out the stumps and done the best I could to get it in shape. I plowed it just as soon as the ground was dry enough, about the first of April, that is. I worked it every little while just as nearly as I could as the Hungarian land had been worked, I harrowed and rolled, let it rest a while, then harrowed and rolled. I kept it up until my next door neighbor, Mr. Croy, had planted his corn, and it was four inches high and growing pretty well. Ours wasn't planted. A neighbor came and said, 'I am sorry for you, Terry, you don't know what you are about. You are fooling away your time. Your corn ought to have been in before this.' I was harrowing and rolling. I was determined to see whether I could do it over again. Some of the neighbors said it couldn't be done again.

"The fourth or fifth of June--too late, ordinarily, to plant corn with us--I put in the crop. I wish you could have seen it grow! It came up and grew from the word 'Go.' In four weeks it was ahead of any corn about. It went ahead of my neighbor's corn that was three or four inches high when ours was planted. We had a crop that, the farm in the condition that it was, was considered as something remarkable. They couldn't account for it, neither could I. All I knew was I had been working the ground so and so and getting such and such results.

"Let us go back once more. The first year that I moved onto that farm, the first fall, we had nine cows, and I wanted to save all of the manure. Now, there wasn't an experimental station in the land. I didn't know anything about the potassium or nitrogen in the liquid manure, but I had seen where it dropped on the land and how the grass grew. I thought it was plant food, and our land was hungry. I said, I must try and save this manure, and not have it wasted. I hadn't a dollar. What did I do? There was an old stable there that would hold ten cows. It was in terrible shape. It had a plank floor that was all broken. I tore it out. I hauled some blue clay. I filled the stable four or five inches deep with the blue clay, wet it, pounded it down, shaped it off and got it level, fixed it up around the sides, saucer shape, so it would hold water. Then I laid down some old boards (I couldn't buy new ones), and put in a lot of straw there and put my cows in. I saved all that manure the first year, all that liquid. I had twice as much, probably more, from the same number of cows as had been saved on that farm before, and it was much more valuable. That was the beginning the first winter, when I hadn't anything.

"For the horse stable I went to town and found some old billboards. It was new lumber, but had been used for billboards. After the circus the owner offered to sell the boards cheap, and to trust me. He was a carpenter, and he jointed them. We put them crosswise on the old plank floor, and when they got wet they swelled and became practically water tight. I even crawled under and saw that there was no liquid manure dropping down there. I drew sawdust and used for bedding. I saved the liquid of the horse stable. I didn't know it was worth three times as much, pound for pound, as the solid. I didn't know it was worth two times as much in the cow stable, pound for pound, as the solid. I found it out by experience.

"Now, when I was in town, before going on this farm, I worked for S. Straight & Son, the then great cheese and butter kings of the Western Reserve. I was getting over a thousand dollars a year in their office. They didn't want me to leave at all, but my wife and I took a notion to be independent, to work for ourselves, and we bought this old farm. We had a chance to work for ourselves, all right. The first year we worked from early in the morning until nine or ten o'clock at night, and then we tumbled into bed, too tired to think, to get up and do it over again. I worked in the field, taking out stumps and doing something, as long as I could see, and then helped my wife to milk. We would get our supper along about nine or ten o'clock. At the end of the year we had not one single dollar, after paying our interest and taxes,--not one dollar to show for our work. Do you wonder we were pretty discouraged?

"I met Mr. Straight one day. He said: 'Terry, things are not going very well in the office since you left. I wish you would come back. You are not doing much over on that farm that I can see. You are having a hard time. I will gladly give you $1,200 a year if you will come back into our office.' It was a great temptation. Think what it meant. To move back to town and have $100 a month. But I said, 'No, Mr. Straight; I can't do it.' I don't deserve any credit for it, friends: but I wasn't built that way. I can't back out. When I undertake anything I have got to go through. I would have been willing enough to leave that farm, if I had made a success of it, after I made a success of it, as I thought then; but I wasn't willing to give up, whipped--to acknowledge that I had undertaken that job and had to back out and go back to town to make a living.

"Some little incident sometimes will change the whole character of a man's life. I remember, when we were in very hard conditions, we were sitting under an apple tree in our door yard one evening. It is there yet. Two men from town went by. One of them said to the other, 'What is Terry going to do?' The other said, 'If Terry sticks to it he will make something out of that old farm.' Just as quick as a flash, friends, I said, 'Terry will stick to it.'

"You see what condition we were in. I began to put all these matters together. I had been taught how to. In college I had been trained to study and think, of course,--not to work with my hands. When I got onto the work at first I worked myself almost to death with my hands, and had no time to think or study; but gradually old methods came around again and I began to think and study. I said: 'Here, more hay to the acre, better hay, increased fertility by growing that clover, increased fertility by working that soil so much.' I didn't know why, but there was the fact. 'Now, isn't it possible to put these matters together and so work them out as to build up the fertility of this farm and make it blossom like the rose?'

"I began to work it out. What was the first step? I sold eight or nine cows to get a little money to start, thus cutting off practically our whole source of income. There was no other way I could get any money. We had to do some draining. A part of the land we could not do anything with until it was tile-drained. It took money to buy tile. I had to have a little help about the digging, although I like to boast that I laid every tile on my farm with my own hands. I buried every one and know it will stay there. They were all sound and hard and good. In all these years not one has ever failed, not one drain or tile. I worked day after day, in the rain, wet to the skin, because it had to be done. It was the foundation of our success.

"As I was coming here yesterday, and passed so much of your flat land, in need of drainage, I thought, drainage is the foundation of success for lots of these people, down here in southern Illinois. You can't do much until you have the water out of the land. Then you have a chance to do something with tillage and manure-saving and clover. But you throw away your efforts when you try to do this work on land that is in need of drainage.

"As fast as possible we fixed up this land. Of course, it took years. We hadn't money, and there were many things that had to be done,--changing fields, getting out stumps, doing drainage,--it all took time. I had my plans made and was working as fast as I could.

"Two things I did, to keep life in our bodies until we got ready to make some money. One was to cut off every bit of timber on the farm. Our neighbors laughed at us and prophesied rain and all that. There were two things in my mind. We had to have money to live on, and I managed to get quite a little of it in that way. In the next place we didn't have much of a farm, and I wanted the land for tillage. We can buy wood of the neighbors to-day, cheaper than we sold ours, so we never lost anything.

"Another way we got some money, as we went along, that helped us, was raising forage crops. I did not attempt to put in crops that required much hand labor. I raised Hungarian, and everything I could to be fed to cows. In our dairying section, with feed often scarce in the fall, farmers often had more stock than they could winter. We could pick up cows cheaply on credit and hold them. I could winter them for people, and the manure we used as a top dressing, to make the clover grow. Starting with a little piece of land, we spread out more and more, and got more and more enriched, and more and more growing clover, and by and by we got all the cultivated land growing it. Then we were ready for business.

"I am afraid to tell you Illinois farmers, with your great big farms, how large our farm was. We bought one hundred and twenty-five acres. We sold off all but fifty-five. That didn't help us, for the man who bought it was so poor he didn't pay us for over thirty years. Then the land went up in price and he was able to sell it for a good price and we got our money. Fifty-five acres were selected, the best we could for our purpose. Twenty acres were so situated as to have no value. Thirty-five acres were fairly good, tillable land, the best we could pick out. I began a system of rotation, after we got the land ready for it, of clover, potatoes, and wheat. My idea was to have the clover gather fertility to grow potatoes and wheat. I was going to make use of the tillage to help out all I could, and sold the potatoes and wheat, and then had clover again, and so on around the circle. Everybody said, of course I would fail. I didn't know but I would. It was the only chance and I had to take it.

"Of course it took quite a while to get this thing going. The first three or four years didn't amount to much. After six or eight years we were surprised at the result. We were getting more than we hoped for. In a dozen years the whole country was surprised. I remember when a reporter was sent from Albany, New York, to see what we were doing, and reported in the "Country Gentlemen." We had visitors by the score from various states, it made such a stir. They couldn't believe it was possible for a man to take land as poor as that, and make it produce so well. We had some they could see that had not been touched. As I told you, in eleven years we were out of debt. After about ten or eleven years we were laying up a thousand dollars a year, above all living and running expenses, from this land, raising potatoes and wheat. It doesn't seem possible to you, large farmers, but you can't get around the facts. In 1883 we laid up $1,700 from the land. But this was a little extra.

"We wanted to build a new house. We had lived in the old shell long enough. We had the money to pay cash down for the new house and to pay for the furniture that went into it. We paid $3,500 cash down, that fall, for the house and furniture, and every dollar taken out of the land. Only two or three years before that we paid the last of our debt. I had not done any talking or writing to speak of, at that time. I did not begin until 1882 I never went to an institute, and never wrote an article for a paper, except when called upon to do it. I never sought such a job and prefer to stay at home on my farm. It was only because I was called to do this work that I got into it. For twenty-one years I was never at home one week during the winter season. Farmers called for me and I didn't feel that I could refuse to go.

"Now, how did we do it? I told some of the things. Let us go down to the science of the matter little, now. I didn't know anything about the science at the time. That came later. Practice came first. We know now- of course, you all know--that clover has the ability, through the little nodules that grow on the roots, to take the free nitrogen out of the air to grow itself. You know about four-fifths of the air you are breathing is nitrogen in the form of gas, and clover has the ability to feed on that and make use of it. The other plants have not. I might illustrate it in this way: You can't eat grass; at least, you wouldn't do very well on it. But the steer eats grass and you eat the steer, so you get the grass, don't you? Your corn, wheat, oats, timothy, potatoes, so far as we know, can't touch free nitrogen in the air, but clover can and then feed it to those other crops.

"Let us look into how we got the phosphorus. On land that would not grow over six to eight bushels of wheat per acre we have succeeded once in growing forty-seven and three- fourths bushels to the acre, on all the land sowed, of wheat that sold away above the market price and weighed sixty- four pounds to the measured bushel, and never put on a pound of phosphorus. We got it from that tillage we told you about. Our land in northeastern Ohio is not very good naturally. It is nothing like what you have in this state. Most of you know that is the poorest land we have in the state in general, but we have a fair share of clay and sand in ours. That has helped us wonderfully. We have clay enough so that with our tillage we can make so far all the plant food available we want.

"Now, a little more about the tillage. I told you how we worked the surface of that ground and made it fine and nice. After five or six years, perhaps, of this kind of work, I got to thinking if I had some tool that would stir that ground to the bottom of the plowed furrow and mix it very deeply and thoroughly, I might get still better results out of the tillage. I happened to be in town one morning in the fall, when we had some wheat land (clover sod) plowed and prepared for wheat. I had harrowed and rolled it and made it as nice as I could.--It was what the neighbors would call all ready for sowing and more than ready. In town I saw a man trying to sell a two-horse cultivator. I think it was made in this State. It was the first one I ever saw--you can judge how long ago. It was a big, heavy, cumbersome thing,--a horse-killer. I thought, if I only had that, I knew I could increase the fertility of our soil still more. I hadn't any money. We hadn't got far enough that there was a dollar to spare. What did I do? I gave my note for $50 and took that cultivator home with me. I could have bought it for $35 in money, but I didn't have it. My wife didn't say a word when I got home. I have heard since that she did a lot of crying to think I would go in debt $50 more, and all for that thing.

"I got home about eleven o'clock and you can well suspect that I couldn't eat any dinner that day. I hitched up and went right to work, and told my wife I couldn't stop for any dinner. I rode that cultivator that day and tore up that field in a way land was never torn up in our section before. There was nothing to do it with. The soil would roll up and tumble over. After going lengthwise I went crosswise. A thousand hogs couldn't have made it rougher. The neighbors looked on and said that 'Terry would do 'most anything if you would only let him ride.' The worst of it was, I really didn't know but what they were right, and all he would get out of it was the riding. It was a serious thing. I had to wait until the harvest time before I could know.

"What was the result? I got ten bushels of wheat more per acre than had ever grown on the land before, without any manure or fertilizer having been applied since it grew the previous crop in the rotation. Clover had been grown. It was a clover sod. I didn't know how much came from the clover and how much from the tillage. I didn't care, they went together to get that result. I asked some of the old settlers how much had been grown there per acre during their recollection. They said twenty-three bushels was the most they had known. I got thirty-three. The neighbors said, 'It happened so, you can't do it again.' You know how they talk, to make out nothing can be done with an old farm. I was interested in doing it again. I paid that note and had a large margin of profit left, you see, out of the extra wheat. It all came right.

"The next year I took the next field in rotation and worked it in the same way, probably more. I got thirteen bushels more wheat per acre than ever grew before. Thirty-six bushels of wheat! Such a thing was never heard of in our section before; land that would not grow anything a dozen years ago. Do you wonder I have been an enthusiast on tillage since then? Why, they call me a crank sometimes. It is a good crank, as it has turned out prosperity for us.

"After a time I began to think, can't we carry this matter a little further? People generally don't cultivate their crops more than two or three times in a season. Can I cultivate more to advantage? I began to try it, six or eight times, eight or ten. I think there have been dry years when I have cultivated our potatoes as many as fifteen times. I don't believe we ever went through them when it didn't pay.

"I remember one fall, when it was a wet season. When the tops began to die and got to the point where I could see the space between the rows, I started the cultivators again. I had money then to hire men and I hired plenty of them. I started to cultivate between the rows. People said, ' What is the idiot doing now? ' I said, ' He is going to raise five bushels more by doing that work, that it what he is after.'

"Now, remember, more hay to the acre, better hay, increased fertility by growing clover, increased fertility by working this land over and over in the different ways I have told you of. They used to send for me to talk on this subject, before I knew anything about it, except that I had done it. In Wisconsin, some twenty years ago, I helped at the first institute held in the state. They sent for me to come up. I told them what I was doing and how I thought it came about, what I thought clover was doing for me. When I was through I asked Professor Henry, who was in the audience, to tell me, honestly, what he thought about my talk. He said, 'As a farmer I believe you are right, but as a scientific man I dare not say so in public.'

"Professor Roberts came to my place one time, to investigate a little. I knew what he came for. I showed him around, and showed him the land we had not touched, not to this day. He was a surprised man. I remember the second crop of clover was at its best. It was above his knees. He says, 'This will make two tons of hay to the acre, and it is the second crop.' He didn't say but very little. I couldn't get him to talk much. He went home and began that system of experiments at Ithaca that has practically revolutionized the agriculture of the east--experiments in tillage. Pretty soon we had his book on the fertility of the soil. I think he got his inspiration from what he saw. He said to himself, seems to me, 'Terry has something that scientific men do not know.' He got samples of soil all over the state. They analyzed the soil and found what the average soil of New York contained. They found about four thousand five hundred pounds of nitrogen, six thousand three hundred pounds of phosphoric acid, and twenty-four thousand pounds of potash in an average acre eight inches deep; and they had been buying potash largely. (Laughter.)

"The farm we moved onto was the old Sanford homestead. Old Mr. Sanford lived there and brought up a large family. I think five of them boys. Every one of these boys left the farm just as soon as they could get away. There wasn't anything in farming for them. After we had been at work a dozen years or more and got things going nicely, they came back (one of them lives in Connecticut) and visited the old homestead. I remember Lorenzo said, 'It seems like a miracle. I don't know how you did it. We worked from daylight to dark, from one year's end to another, and never had anything. We boys used to be promised a holiday on the Fourth of July if the corn was all hoed. That was all we got. How on earth have you done these things?'

"Friends, there were three farms we bought. Old Mr. Sanford didn't know anything about but one. There was the air and the soil and there was the subsoil. He had been working only the soil, plowing it three or four inches deep, scratching it over, taking what came, and every year less and less came. The land had run down until the surface had quit producing. We took the same soil, put in clover and took the fertility out of the upper farm, the air, and out of the lower one, the subsoil, and put it into the second one. We plowed the surface soil a little deeper and deeper until we got it eight or nine inches deep instead of four. We worked it more and more, setting more and more of the available plant food in the soil free. That is how we did it.

"I say 'we' advisedly, because, friends, if I hadn't had a wife fully able and willing to do her part, and more, I would not have this story to tell."



CHAPTER XXXVIII
AN AWAKENING DREAM

"THE chores are all done," said Mrs. Johnston, as Percy began to take down his heavy work-coat about nine o'clock that evening.

"You ought not to have done them," he chided as he slipped his arm around her and drew her to the sofa.

"Tell me about the Institute," she said, stroking the hair from his forehead.

He told her of the professors who were there from the University and briefly reported the addresses he had heard.

"And I verily believe," he added, "that if Terry were to wake up some morning and find himself located on the "Barrens" of the Highland Rim of Tennessee, he would start out with the firm conviction that all he would need to do to become a successful farmer there would be to sow clover and then 'work the land for all that's in it.' But, after all, it is not so strange, perhaps, that one who has himself discovered and then utilized the power of clover and tillage to restore and increase the productive power of land rich in limestone, phosphorus and all other essential mineral plant food, should jump to the fixed and final conclusion that the same system of treatment is all that is needed to make any and all land productive. The fact that Terry's land (if equal to the nearby New York land) contained two thousand three hundred pounds of phosphorus in the plowed soil of an acre when he began to work it out, while the soil of the Tennessee " Barrens " contains only about one hundred pounds, does not disturb him or modify his opinion so long as his personal experience is limited to his own land.

"Terry's problem was easier than Mr. West's on his Virginia farm, where the soil is acid and hence limestone must be used liberally in order that clover and other legumes may be grown successfully. Even the supply of phosphorus and other mineral elements is probably greater in Terry's farm in northeastern Ohio than in the soil of Westover.

"Our problem is even more difficult, because we must not only increase the supply of active organic matter, although we have a reserve of old humus far above that contained in the Terry or West farms; but in addition we need more limestone than Mr. West and then we must add the phosphorus. Of course the surface washing is a serious factor on Westover, but perhaps our tight clay subsoil is worse.

"But I learned at least two things that I shall try to profit by. One of these was from Governor Hoard's lecture on 'Cows Versus Cows, and the man behind the cow'; and the other is that we must do more work on the land."

"Oh, Percy, I am so sorry you went. How can you possibly do more work than you have been doing? "

"I may need to hire more," he replied; "and, of course, that will further increase our expenses, but, it will surely pay to do well what we try to do."

"When does my boy expect to get married ? " she asked, softly, as she gently stroked his hair.

"I am married," he replied.

She looked at him in wonder.

"Mother mine, I thought that you knew I was married."

"Your face is blank sincerity, as usual," she said smiling, "but you never deceive me with your voice. Your voice reveals every attempt at deception. Tell me what you mean."

His voice was sincere now. "I am married to a farm and laboring together with God. After hearing Terry's talk, I am more than ever determined to continue to do my part, working in the light as He gives me the power to see the light."

"Percy, dear," she asked, "did you know the bride whose wedding cards you received yesterday?"

"Don't you remember what I told you of Adelaide West, Mr. West's daughter?" he queried.

"I thought so," said the mother. She stepped to Percy's home-made desk, and from one of the pigeon holes, drew out a bunch of letters, and selected the top and bottom letters from the pile.

"Here are the first and last letters you have received from Mr. West. Did you ever see this? " She drew out a crumpled piece of paper and placed it in his hand.

"Her Grandma had not consented," he read. "What does that mean?"

"I do not know and I did not know when I read it three years ago. It came in your first letter from Mr. West. I thought you had not found it in the envelope, but you gave me the letter to read and I found it. I left it in the letter, but never till to-day did I feel that I ought to mention it to you. Yesterday you received a letter with two cards; but you read only one of them to me."

"But I saw the other was only the wedding announcement, and I left them both in the letter for you to read."

"And I read them both," she said. "Read this."

Percy took the card and slowly read:

Mr. and Mrs. Clarance Voit
Announce the marriage of their daughter
Ameila Louise
to
Professor Paul Strongworth Barstow

She watched his face but saw no sign. She kissed his forehead and then pointed to the writing, "With Grandma's Compliments," saying, "I do not know what this means, but I thought my boy might be getting too careless, when he fails to read even the wedding announcement of college professors, sent to him by such a good friend as Grandma West may intend to be."

Percy looked into his mother's face as if to read her thoughts.

"I think I understand what you have in mind," he said. "Mr. West has mentioned once or twice that Adelaide was teaching school, but I supposed that she was trying to earn enough to buy her own wedding outfit."

"Perhaps that is true," replied the mother, " and perhaps she is already married or soon to be married; but I thought you ought to know that she had not married Professor Barstow, lest you might allude to it in your letters to Mr. West."



CHAPTER XXXIX
HONEY WITHOUT WAX

"WELL, I reckon the cowboy's gone back to 'tend to his cows," remarked the grandmother to Adelaide, as she returned from taking Percy to Blue Mound and found the old lady sitting on the lawn bench apparently enjoying the mild late November weather. "Did you leave him at the station or see him off?"

"Neither," Adelaide replied, sitting down beside her. "The train was late, and he insisted on coming back with me to the first turn, and then stood and watched till I came within sight of home at the next turn. I doubt if he is back to the station yet."

"He reminds me, Pet, of the Latin definition you gave for sincere," remarked the grandmother. "Pure honey without wax, wasn't it?"

"Oh, no, Grandma. Not pure honey. It says nothing about honey. Sine is the Latin for without, and cera means wax; so that our word sincere, taken literally from the Latin, means without wax."

"Oh, yes, I see now; but let me tell you, Adelaide, I think that professor of yours is right smart wax."

"Why, Grandma! I never heard you say such a thing. You know papa and mamma like Professor Barstow and I think I like him too, and,-- and he has papa's consent, and mamma's consent."

"Well, you never heard me say such a thing before and you won't ever hear it again, but he hasn't got my consent. I think he's some wax, but I reckon you think he's some honey, and I know he thinks he's some punk'ns. Of course, your father would like an English or Scottish nobleman for a son-in-law, or at least a college professor with a string of ancestry reaching across the water; but the Henry's prefer to make their own reputations as they go along, and I doubt if Patrick ever saw England or Scotland. I tell you, Adelaide, a pound of gumption will make a better husband than a shipload of ancestry, and I just hope you will more than like your husband, that's all."

With that the old lady arose and walked to the house.




CHAPTER XL
INSPIRATION


WESTOVER,
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,

CHARLES WEST.

"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."




CHAPTER XLI
THE KINDERGARTEN


HEART-OF-EGYPT, ILLINOIS,
November 9, I 909.

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



CHAPTER XLII
ADVANCE INFORMATION

HEART-OF-EGYPT, November 14, 1909.

DEAR father and mother: I can scarcely realize that I have been an "Egyptian" for almost two years. I feel that the time has been shorter than two months of school-teaching.

Percy is so encouraged with the crops that I rejoice with him, although I could never weep with him unless I weep for joy. He says the crops needed only that I should stroll over the fields with him; that they would grow rapidly if I only looked at them. Think of it--I drove the mower to cut hay, --not all of the 80 acres, to be sure, but I cut where it yielded two tons per acre. That is on No. 4, where Percy applied his first cars of limestone. I wish you could have seen the untreated strips--no clover and only half a ton of weedy timothy, while the rest of No. 4 and No. 6 were clean hay of mixed alsike and timothy. Percy says that No. 4 produced as much real hay last year as all the rest of the farm has produced since he came, and that the hay crop this year is worth as much for feed as all that has been harvested during the previous five years; and the cattle and horses seem to agree with him.

We sold our main lot of hogs for $654, and have another lot to go later. We are getting so many horses and cattle on the place, that we are going out of the hog business.

Percy says that hogs belong more properly in the corn belt, than in the wheat and fruit belt. You know the year I came the corn crop was on No. I, which had never grown anything but corn, oats, and wheat, so far as we can learn; and the corn was so poor the hogs ate most of it in two months' time. During the same two months the price of hogs dropped from 7 to 4-1/2 cents, so that the hogs were worth no more after eating the corn crop than they were before.

Next year we are to have corn on No. 4, and Percy says it will be the first time that corn has had a "ghost of a show to make a decent crop" since he bought the place. The spring before we were married he reseeded that forty, sowing mixed alsike and timothy. The clover came on finely, evidently because the scanty growth of clover the year before had at least allowed the field to become thoroughly infected with the clover bacteria. There was no clover on the unlimed strip. So we say that limestone and bacteria brought clover. The hay and other feed has made manure enough so that No. 4 has been completely covered with six tons per acre, and the phosphate has also been applied; so with manure and phosphate on clover ground we hope to grow corn next year, if we have good weather.

The phosphate has also been put on some of the other forties. I convinced him that the money will pay a higher rate of interest in phosphate than it would in the savings bank, even if he put it on before manure and clover could be plowed under. The experiments of several states show this very conclusively.

The corn is on No. 3 this year and it is the best crop in the six years. Percy says the "Terry Act" (which means lots of work in preparing the land) is some help, but he thinks the phosphate shows against the check strips. The young wheat on No. 2 is looking fine, and with both limestone and phosphate on that field and the extra work on the seed bed, we hope for a better crop than we have ever grown on a full forty; even though we must depend solely upon our reserve stock of nitrogen for the crop. We are all about as jealous of that reserve stock of organic matter and nitrogen as we are of the Winterbine bank account.

I cannot forget how Percy tried to persuade me to postpone our wedding for a year because, as he said, the hogs had taken his corn crop and given nothing in return for it; and above all how he objected to my reimbursing the Winterbine reserve from my teacher's wages to the extent of $250, which he had drawn in part to tide over the hard times, and in part to come to see me that Easter. But I am glad to have him still insist upon it that that uncertain venture proved his best investment, even if he does tease by adding that it paid one hundred and fifty per cent. net profit at Winterbine.

We are selling some cows this fall,--trying to weed out our herd by the Babcock test which shows that "some cows don't pay their board and keep," to quote Governor Hoard's lecture on "Cows versus Cows," which Percy heard at Olney the winter Professor Barstow was married. The "versus cows " are worth only $45.

I cannot tell you how I have enjoyed the summer. Sir Charles Henry is the dearest child, and his grandmother insists upon it that it is better for me to help Percy in the field with such light work as I can do, and I am out for a few hours every day when the weather is good. Percy's mother is such a dear. I am sure she could be no more sweet and loving to an own daughter. She had Percy all to herself for so long that I was really afraid she might not like to share him with me, but Percy says that it was his mother who persuaded him to make us that Easter visit. We tell her that she hasn't much use for either of us now, and that we are likely to get jealous because Charles Henry gets so much of her affection.

I forgot to tell you of Percy's four-acre patch of wheat. He said it is so long to wait till 1912 for his first wheat crop on land that had grown clover at least once during historic times that he thought he would fix up a little patch to grow a crop of wheat, just to see how real wheat would look; or, as he sometimes says, to see how wheat grows in "Egypt" when it has a ghost of a chance.

He treated a four-acre patch down by the wood's pasture with limestone, phosphorus, and farm manure, did the "Terry Act" in preparing the seed bed, and drilled in a good variety of wheat, on October 17,--a little later than he likes to finish sowing wheat. It came up with a good stand but did not make very much fall growth, partly owing to the dry weather. In the spring the man came across the patch and reported to Percy that the wheat was mighty small and he guessed it was "gone up," although it seemed to be all alive. Percy said that he would not worry about it if it were alive because the wheat would find something to please it when it really woke up in the spring. I reckon it did, for a neighbor passed on his way to town in early May and called over the fence to Percy that his patch of rye down by the woods was looking fine. Well the four acres yielded 129-1/2 bushels, or a little more than thirty-two bushels per acre. Percy said if he could have eighty acres of it and sell it for $1.18 a bushel, the same as he got for the last he sold, it would amount to twice the original cost of the land--and then some.

Mr. Barton asked him if he could not raise "just as good crops with good old farm manure," and if he could not build up his whole farm with farm manure. Percy said yes, but he would need three thousand tons for the first application. Mr. Barton then suggested that that was more than the whole township produced.

No. 5 has been in pasture for three years, clover and grass having been seeded in 1906, even though the wet weather had prevented the seeding of wheat the fall before, and the ground was left too rough for the mower. Percy hopes to have that forty completely covered with manure by the time he will be ready to apply the phosphate and plow it under for the 19 I I corn crop.

Now your "Egyptian" son has just read over this long, long letter, and he says that if I were a real wise old farmer I would not begin to talk about results before a single forty acres of grain had had a ghost of a chance to make a crop. He says that every bushel of corn, oats, and wheat that this old farm has produced during the last six years has been wholly at the expense of the meager stock of reserve nitrogen still left in the soil after seventy-five years of almost continuous effort to "work the land for all that's in it" He says that we have no right to expect really good crops until after the second rotation is completed, because the clover grown during the first rotation does not have a fair show, the limestone not yet being well mixed with the soil, the phosphorus supply being inadequate, the inoculation or infection being imperfect, and no provision whatever having been made to supply decaying organic matter in advance of the first clover crop. I think he is right as usual and I promise to give no more advance information hereafter except upon inquiry, at least not until 1918, when the first wheat crop will be grown on land which has been twice in clover. We are mighty sorry not to be able to be with you for Thanksgiving or Christmas, but really we cannot go to the expense; our house is so small (we just must build a larger barn) and our home equipment is so meager that, in the words which you will remember Percy told us his mother credited to Mrs. Barton, I feel that as yet I must say,

"Do come over when you can."

Your happy, loving daughter,

ADELAIDE.

P.S.--Three big oil wells, belonging to the class called " gushers," have been struck about seven or eight miles from Poorland Farm. We are all getting interested except Percy. He says he does not want any oil wells on his six rotation forties or in the wood's pasture, but he might let them bore in the twelve-acre orchard, which has never produced but one crop that paid for itself, and the profit from that is about all gone for the later years of spraying.