Little Falls transcript. [volume] (Little Falls, Morrison County, Minn.) 1876-1894, 1889-06-14
AFTER WHEAT, WHAT.

AFTER WHEAT, WHAT?
Red Wing Republican,: This
question meets the eye at the head Of
recent articles in agricultural columns
Of newspapers. It implies that some
product is desirable which may take
the place which wheat has long held
in the agriculture of this state, as the
one single crop depended upon. It
implies that agriculture needs a
continuance Of the method Of farming
which is now conceded to be failing
as to wheat, only that some new
product is to be found to be cultivated
for a few years in the same style.
Under the inquiry above given the
articles speak Of fax as the coming
crop. They tell of some expert in
the growing Of flax and the
manufacture of linen in a foreign
country who has assured our
department Of agriculture that just
as fine flax ean be grown in the
United States and just as good linen
fabrics manufactured here as in any
country in the world. They mention
a new invention in the working up Of
the fax fibre whereby it may be
taken from the stalk without the
delay of the process Of rotting
Certainly we are glad Of the
invention Of any process to save labor
Or time, if the monopolists Of the
Irvine trust do not get control Of it.
But if anything written in favor Of
fax culture turns a single farmer
away from making resolutions to
abandon the former system of
exclusive cultivation of any one thing
in the belief that he may do With
flax what experience shows he cannot
do with wheat, then the talk about
fax will be detriment to the state.
For it is is not because of something
peculiar to wheat, that after twenty
or thirty years constant cropping,
soil produces far less average yearly
returns.
Wheat, as it has been grown
hitherto in Minnesota, exhausts the
soil more and more, because every
years growth of seed and straw has
drawn from the soil something
requisite for the special crop, while
the system of cultivation, sending the
grain away and burning up the straw,
returns to the soil no part of that
which has been taken up by the
wheat plant and stored in its stalk
and berry. There is no crop in the
world which does not exhaust the soil
on which it is grown, if the product is
all sold away, or lost, or not returned
in some form to the land. In some
Ct the southern states this fact may
be proved in respect to tobacco.
where there were years ago, hundreds
Of acres which had borne good crops
and then been abandoned as worn
out, The same experience in regard
to cotton lands has been had in other
states there. The same system d
cultivation has exhausted the
wheat producing powers of lands
in this country from east te
west; that is, new land found
productive has been cropped until
it became unremunerative in wheat
Now fax is another product which
will be wholly sent away from tn,
farm, if, as the papers seem tx
promise, the new invention shall
! make the fibre available for tn,
manufacture of Irvine, thread and al
linen fabrics, while the seed will a!
now, be wanted for oil. 1t will ther
inevitably exhaust the soil in a few
years so that it, too, flax as we'll a.
wheat will not pay for raising.
1t is true, that, as no vegetable
product contains exactly the SANE
element as any other product, tn
exhaustion of a piece of land for on,
product has not always exhausted it
sometimes has not at all weakened it
for the production Of some other. Blu
| the nearer alike two products are tn
more does its impoverishment for ONT
crop impair and shorten it
production for the other. Whet
farms that are wheat poor have beer
worn out with flax, also, will thu
owners be in any better condition, al
things considered? Will they b.
then more willing or more able *
turn to the system of farming which
has always succeeded the one crol
practice, wherever the land has no
been abandoned to idleness and
nature? Before saying, After wheat
flax it would be. we'll to consider
After the exhaustion Of ten years o.
flax, what D.? :.
------------------------ ~ > .
New York Herald: We observe q
great hullabaloo about the prodigious