The Wellington enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 1867-188?, 1882-04-19
Agriculture In America.

Most prominent among the factors
that have contributed toward the extrs-
ordinary development and prosperity of
agriculture in the United States is, un-
questionably, the great native fertility OF
soils, as yet unexhausted in the newer
Safes and Territories, which are thus
enabled to pour out upon the East and
upon Europe the accumulated soil treas
ufes of many ages. That these can not
hold out forever, or even for many years
to come, is an inexorable law of nature;
and the steady diminution of production
per acre in the States east of the Missis-
sippi River, resulting in their increasing
inability to compete in the growing of
cereals with the newer States, has long
given warning that the experience of the
Old World Is being repeated on the now
continent, and that the old and ever
recurring question is upon US of main
tanning profitable productiveness by
means of systematic culture and returns
to the soil.
Whether this question shall be allowed
to assume the aspect of the menace that
annually confronts the European agri-
culturist-aNo manure, no crops"-or
whether an ounce of intelligent preven-
ton shall forestan the heavy burdens
LQak WILL OLQ6IWlS6 TtSL uPOu bu6 COulluk
generation and its industries, is the issue
that must largely be determined by
enlightened Government action, in the
face of the already inyeterate bad
habits of the vast majority of American
farmers, that are, as usual, promptly
adopted by the European immigrant.
The ravaging of the virgin soils by
heavy cropping without change, or even
the slightest attempt at returns, followed
by the " turning-out of the stirred
land, and, too often, by the washing
away of the surface soil from the hard
plow-sole formed by shallow tillage,
not uncommonly resulting in the defini-
tive ruin of the hand for agricultural
purposes, is repeated more or less in ev'
cry newly-settied region. Deserted
homesteads and melancholy old fields
SCARED with gullies mar the face of the
land in the rear of the pioneer farmer,
and impose upon his steadier successor
q heavy tax, in the way of reclamation,
on soils that, if nationally cultivated,
would not have felt the need of manure
for scores of years. For want of the
most rudimentary knowledge of agri-
cultural facts and principles, the plant
ers of the South have for three-quarters
of a century wasted nine crops of cotton
for every one made by failing to utilize
the chief product of their fields-cotton
seed-for returns to the soil, which
needs but little more to maintain its full
productiveness forever. Such q crying
evil as this would hardly have been al
lowed to exist so long in any country
less averse to the least semblance of
paternal government without something
more than the faint warnings and re-
monstrances uttered from time to time
in the periodical press, or in Govern
ment documents. The great perfection
attained by agricultural implements for
large-scale culture, under the hands Of
American inventive skill, serves bat to
add to the rapidity with which the proc
ess of soil devastation is carried forward
into new fields.-E. w. Hlgdrd, in At
lantic Monthly.