Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1875-05-21

Dusu6l OF COTu5 wheat, OaJs or Il pale
of Gotten than it need to cost, it is a
dime wasted and lost forever. But to
cultivate poor land, often made such
By unwise tillage and husbandry, is to
pay large prices for staple crops.
Make one hundred million acres of
land fertile, and you reduce the cost
of grain, cotton and tobacco more than
half.
Why will not Tennessee farmers and
others consider this industrial prob
lem? We have never been able to get
a fair hearing on the question of recu-
perating soils whose fruitfulness has by
any means been impaired, whether by
the act Of man or of nature. Last year
Mr.. Sulivant, of Illinois, raised on his
forty thousand acre prairie fam over
four hundred thousand bushels Of corn
at an estimated cost of less than ten
cents bushel. For two hundred years,
and how much more no one knows, be-
fore the land came into possession of
Mr.. S., hunters, stock-raisers and Indi-
ans had burnt all the grass once or twice
a year on these prairies. All the plants
grownintwoh hundred summers were har-
vested by'fre and given to the air every
year Now, did this annual loss of the
combustible part of every crop raised
on any farm, impoverish the soil?
Certainly not. Immigrants from the
East and the South find these long
burnt prairies remarkable for their
fairness, and depth Of fertilizing mate
rial. Whatever part Of a crop one can
burn IN a fire or oven, he may export
to a distant city or continent, and sell
nothing but vapor and valueless gas.
But in 100 pounds Of corn in the sack
there are S83 pounds of common atmos-
pheTic air, which costs nothing IN the
South and West, and is worth as little
as it costs. In 100 pounds of wheat
there are over go podnds Of combus-
tible substances.
Man himself is air and vapor, and
lives and moves In an ocean Of such ex-
pansible bodies. Living at the bottom
of a sea, surrounded by substances
which favor most wonderful freedom of
motion, yet fill every pore Of the skin
and every cell Of the body with some
thing that viii burn and evolve animal
heat so called, why should not all men
raise equal quantities Of grain and cot
ton from equal surfaces Of ground?
The waters Of the ocean by its constant
tides, currents and winds, are pretty
thoroughly mixed; so are the elements
Of plant food which blow over every
mans farm, whether his land is in gull
led old fields or a fresh clearing from
a heavy forest.
After virgin fertility is gone. how
can fruitfulness be easiest restored:
Since the close Of the war with Eng
land in 1915, the farmers Of middle
and western New York have used some
100000 tons of land plaster a year
with an equivalent quantity Of clover
seed to extract the things that make
wheat and corn, grass, meat, milk and
wool, from the air and deep subson.
The fact that they supply home pop
ulation with all the milk, butter and
cheese consumed by over four million
inhabitants, and then ship cheese to
England. to Europe and the Southern
States, by the million pounds, proves
that plant food in the atmosphere, sub
soil and land plaster is not exhausted
in that farming State Are not our
sunshine, rains, dews and gases as good
as any IN New York or Illinois !?
Why, then, should one OF ten farm labor
ers there give two or three times more of
annual crops as they do. or Of cash re-
ceipts for a years service, than our Ia
! ForeTs return!
Clearly this industrial problem is not
understood, and for the best of all
! reasons-no one regards it as worth
studying. For nearly thirty years in
/ the South, and for over three decades
in the North, has the writer tried to
hammer the consideration Of agricul-
tura, phenomena into the American
mind. Two men manufacture corn out
Of air and water; one does the work for
less than ten cents a bushel, while it
costs the other just ten times ten cents
to achieve the same result. Yet they
use the same water, the same air.
The first clement Of cheap production
is to know how TO improve poor land at
the least attainable cost. Nature Of
ten forms rich soils very easily, and at
all times benevolently places her forces
and resources at the service Of mans
intellect and muscle In Japan two
stout men carry a passenger thirty
miles = day in a sedan chair with great
/ labor. In this country one engine
takes 500 or more the same distance in
an hour, With small work on the part
Of any person. Science constructs and
operates the steam engine in the one
country. while primitive toll fulflls it's
appointed task in the other For how
many generations to come shall agri-
culture turn a cold shoulder to science,
in the United States?
Agriculture as an honest calling, not
to say profession, never can rise and
have books, literature and learning,
worth as much as common dirt by the
wagon load before farmers respect
: themselves more as a class, and enlarge
I their department Of useful knowledge.
/ Come up out Of the ruts and see ex-
actly what 1t takes to make a loaf Of
good bread before the seed is formed
n, any cultivated fold II broad Is