The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-01-02


agriculture and had consoidated political organic
atoms. Were these people exterminated by bar
barrie tribes, or had they exhausted the fertility
of the soil, or was their ruin inherent and in the
course of naturel If exterminated by less
civilized but more vigorous race, we have a
parallel in the subiugation of the Romans by
the Cloths. If by soil exhaustion, a prodigious
example of restoration by the growth and decay
of organic matter, over an area once the
cornfields of an extermihated race. Within the
historical period we have record of areas about
the Mediterranean rivaling Europe in extent and
once feeding population equal to present Chris
tendon, which are now almost totally Withdrawn
from human use, or scarcely adding any physi-
cal or moral good to the common interests of
mankind.
The biologists. recognize in man telluric
force, which in power and universally may be
hkened to the great forces of the earth, for
with man alone of all animals came destructive
intelligence; and in his progress from savageism
he has left scars upon the earth which only
geological icons can obliterate Not all the
winds and storms and earthquakes says Mr.
Bushnell, not all the seas and seasons of the
world have done so much to revolutionize the
earth man, the power of an endless life, since
he came forth upon and received dominion over
it To be sure, man cannot destroy
the elements or decrease the forces. The
great terrestrial changes in the future in the
past will be effected through climatic and
geological causes. But it is in the power of
man irreparably to derange those ad aptations of
the night of @ons, she has been preparing and
balancing against the day the earth was to be
mans habitaton.
We have mutilated earths surface, and de-
nuded it of its fair robes We have stilled it's
birds. and crushed its flowers We have changed
its forests to- stubble fields; interfered with its
rainfall and drainage. These are among the
wrongs man has done the earth and his own
kind, and they will certainly be and are visited
in wrath upon his head and his posterity. The
decay of countries and peoples in western Asia
and southern Europe, to which l have alluded,
was doubtless due in part to the action of causes
misrule which cursed nearly every
province subdued by the legions of
the Caesars. Let people," says Mr.
Martineau, give up their contest with moral evil
disregard the injustice, the ignorance, the
greediness that may prevail among them, and
part more and more with the Christian element
of their civilization, and, in declining the battle
of SIM they will mentally get embroiled with
man and with nature" In. this light the physical
condition of any state region is largely in
mans control He can improve or destroy. He
should obey the law of both reason and religion,
use the earth as not abusing it, for the law of re-
latlon OF earth to man and of man to earth is
leach for all and all for each" Man is partci
pant in nature, he is not dominant; and this
take it, is the highest lesson and teaching. It
comes to US as the prime fact of history and of
biology
The farmer then should stir the SOIL and Law
off his burrows with thoughtful care, for his own
blood and kind will inherit the SOIL blessed or
cursed by his labors and enriched by his re-
mains We owe it to our successors to leave the
inheritance in at least as good condition as it
came from the oceans which deposited its rocks,
and the organisms whose remains compose its
SOIL
/ do not think our schools have sufficiently en-
forced this lesson. Much is said of the dignity
of labor, and of the nobility and independence
of soil culture and conservation, but it has not
yet taken root in education and legislation, and
we are still destructive in the ratio of our civil
cation. The Aryan race has swept round the
earth on its best line of latitude and fairest
climatic zone, until we have met on our Pacific
shores the Asiatic peoples from whom we have
the rudiments of our NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS.,
printing, gunpowder. How does the eastern
track appearf Ruin and desOlation in
Asia Minor, in Turkey, Greece and Italy.
We may see wasted acres in New England; the
devastated cotton and tobacco fields of the South
Atlantic States; in the great Northwest shallow
blowing and burning straw stacks; in our own
| Indiana such total destruction of forests as to
cut off one of our most fruitful sources of in
| come and bringing destruction to the food-swept
| plains of our river bottoms My own impression
is that the colleges have been looking backward
rather than forward. They are not yet up to the
| plane of the steam engine, of chemistry and
/ electricity. These are the forces Of the new
earth, and without these the United States
would still have been wildwood, a prairie, a
mountain fastness and dream Greece for
psychics and expression; the present for physics
| and action. 1t is no time to educate boys off
| the farm and set their faces and thoughts back
ward and eastward. The age is real and con-
crete; it is set to simple purpose and only
! recently are the schools of higher instruction
catching its import and trend. There is some
| thing wrong in the models and teaching we set
before youth, if Professor Campbelps statistics
are correct. and we have in Indiana one hundred
! thousand professional men as against half as
many trades people and four times as many
farm people The courses in weaker schools
and colleges are too many and too discursive
! What moral or reasonable defense has a school
| with dozen professors and an income of fifteen
| to thirty thousand dollars to offer as wide
and varied elective courses as the great colleges
with scores of teachers and vast and
! sufficient resources! l take it to be the duty
of our colleges to prepare young men and women
/ for quiet and homely country farm life and
| that by so thorough grounding in our English
! authors in our political system and natural his
| tory, in mathematics, in the outlines of natural
| science-chemistry, physics, astronomy, botany
zoology and geology-that. life may be cultured
and endurable in the simple and peaceful country
! homes of Indiana
| By wedding out our catalogues, simplifying
our college work, and making it deep and thor
| ough, and in the line of the main industry of
| our people, we may look to the conservation
| and continued improvement of the physical con-
| ditions of Indiana.