Muscatine weekly journal. [volume] (Muscatine, Iowa) 185?-1890, 1860-02-03

the affair is mentioned, that l have had
nv revenge upon her. Bless her faith
full heart, it has indeed been sweet
from the New York Times, JAN 81
Dearth of Food - A Startling
w. ea-t View. 10 a. .at
:, We published yesterday remarka-
Bile letter from Liebig. the great Ger
man chemist, addressed to Mech, the
famous English farmer, upon the mo-
mentous Of all sublunary themes, the
production Of corn. He shows that the
corn producing power Of the civilized,
cultivated countries Of the globe, is
rapidly becoming exhausted 4; that it is
owing to guano that the decline has not
been more rapid and more marked but
that the existing supply Of guano, if it
continues to be consumed at its pres
ent rate, will not last more than twenf-e
ty five or thirty years at the utmost
He predicts accordingly, that unless
war, or pestllence, or famine, or emf
grafton en- ,nsasse, largely diminishes
the population Of the older countries,
they will find themselves, at no very
distant day, if the existing system of
cultivation be pursued, in actual want
of bread, and the Malthusian theory
will thus receive an early and certainly
unlocked for exempli6cation.
The conclusions, so massed together,
are so startling that, even when they
come from an eminent scientific man,
one finds some difficulty in accepting
them. But very cursory inspec-
ton Of what is actually occurring
within our own knowledge, both
here and in Europe, places their gener-
al correctness beyond doubt. For
many years before the repeal of the
corn laws, in 1847, England was only
enabled to keep up the supply of wheat
for her population by the existence of
high protective duties, and consequent
ly high price Of bread and low stand
ard Of living on the part Of the mass
es. ASS US the duties were removed,
the farmers we're unable to produce it
at the market price, and had to give
way before the competition of Russia
and the United States, and betake
themselves 10 raising cattle and green
crops. With these they ale thriving,
as perhaps they never throve before,
but the annual yield Of home grown
wheat, has been enormously diminish
ed, and English bread is now mainly
the product Of the Eastern steppes
and Western prairies, purchased with
British manufactures.
1t is, however, notorious that the
same exhaustion is now showing itself
in lands which have been longest under
cultivation here, and corn is ceasing to-
be a profitable product through all the
Eastern States. In New England, and
New York and Virginia, the yield per
acre is rapidly diminishing and as
the process of exhaustion goes on, we
seek our bread further and ful ther west.
In Germany and Eastern Europe, the
same decline in fertility IS also to be
the cause being everywhere
the same - the continued extraction
from the soil of the elements of pro-
ductiveness, without the smallest at
tempt at their restoration. Owing to
the abundance Of land with which we
have so far been blessed, our farmers
have rarely taken the trouble to man
ure their fields They-feund them vir-
gin soil; they get all they can out Of
them, and when they are exhausted,
abandon them. In Europe, and espe-
cially in England, stern necessity has
compelled the cultivator to take some
pains to restore to the soil some por
ton of the vitality Of which his crops
each year deprive it. The ordinary
farm yard manure was long relied on
for this purpose, but even that at last
ceased to produce the required effect.
Guano then made its appearance, but
according to Liebig the supply Of guano
cannot last much longer, and this once
exhausted, some means must be devils
ed of supplying its place, or the people
Of the civilized world will soon find
face to face with a de6ci-
ency of bread-a crisis which, if it did
not cause absolute famine, would GER
tainly entail descent to a much lower
standard of living, and corresponding
moral degradation. "a r.. ,oaf Q
The formula on which all this gloomy
foreboding is based is very simple
one. To render and keep soil produce
tive, the elements which are withdrawn
in the harvest must be restored. The
ordinary barn-yard manures, where
they are used, partially suffice for that
purpose but only partially. They
leave every year deficiency, and this
multiplied by fifty or one
gives in its final result, total
barrenness. Guano would supply the
need, if the supply we're inexhaustible.
AS it is not so, Liebig insists that We
must fall back on the sewerage Of
towns. These great consumers of food
which modern civilization is creating
and developing on such an enormous
scale, must be made to keep up the
fertility Of the surrounding country by