Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1890-12-20


upon what it is able annually to produce How
serious this problem will be is to be family
realized from the assertion which science
makes-that this continent, being adapted "a
the vegetable rather than the animal, Is inca
pablo OF supporting civilized man.
VEGETABLE AGAINST ANIMAL
There is in America q tremendous contes,
between the vegetable and the animal. Mos,
people imagine that where the soil is best man
can make the best living. But this is very far
from being true. Many person has gone to
BraZll. saying that it could only be necessary
to tickle the soil there in order to make it laugh
| with a harvest, inasmuch as the loan il twenty
feet thick, SO that generations might cultivate
| III without needing to put on a particle OF ma
nure But the agriculturist in that region
| quickly finds that the vegetation is too much
| for him. The grass grows thirty feet high and
| so rapidly that he cannot keep it down. In
order that his corn may prosper he has to hoe
| 1t two or three times a day, lest it be stified
the very vines develop with astounding rapid
ity, reaching $50 feet in length. Thus the
| farmer discovers that the very superiority Of
| the soil for growing purposes deprives him of
! his living. Four-fifths Of Brazil is not suscep-
tible of cultivation. and therefore, of support
ing man, because of its too great fertility As has
been said before, this is a vegetable and not an
| animal continent.
ION the other hand the vegetable resources
of the soil in the United States are being ex-
hausted with frightful rapidity. The eastern
states have begun to be unproductive agricul-
turally. Thousands of acres in Massachusetts,
New York. Pennsylvania, and the southern
border states have been deserted by the farmers.
In order to make once fertile acres of Pennsyl-
vania and New York still productive, millions
| OF dollars have to be spent annually in fetching
guano from the islands off the coast of South
America. This reproductive supply is q tenn
porary one. 1t cannot last very long, because
the deposits of this bird manure are limited in
amount and have already diminished much in
quality. But it is readily seen that even those
formerly rich tracts in the districts mentioned
are absolutely dependent for their productive
ness upon resources other than their own.
AID yet farming has only been an industry in
this country to an extent which would imply
exhaustion of the soil for less then 200 years.
Ohio, Indiana, and sections thereabout were
settled at first within the recollection of per-
sons now alive, and yet they are compelled to
depend today upon imported fertilizers.
PRoDIGAL WASTE.
"To put it plainly the so-called American
people have ramped over this continent regard
less of their future. They have delved into the
soil, chopped into the mountains and used up
the land until there stares them in the face the
almost immediate prospect of starvation. As
for the state of Nevada we have not been there
twenty-five years and its resources have been
exhausted. In other words, it will almost i'm
mediately be unable to support population.
The people who inhabit it are obliged to go be-
cause they can no longer make their living
there, ard 1t is simply q question of a short
time when it will become dead state and so
lapse into the condition OF a territory as inn
possible to revive into the living condition of a
state as if it were a district on the moon.
MAY FOLLOW NEVADA.
'The painful reflection incidental to the sub
ject is that other states, if not all of them are
destined sooner or later to follow Nevada's ex-
ample. The population on this continent can
not necessarily survive the means of sub
sistence afforded it by the country. If what
science says is true, the white man has got
to go. There has been talk to the effect that
the Chinese must vanish, but it must be con-
fessed that they are very much better adapted
to continue existence on this hemisphere than
ourselves, for the obvious reason that they will
survive us here and that they will continue in
their own manner the civilization which we
have made an attempt to start But the eau
caslan, II the scientific men are to be believed,
will not be able to support existence on this
hemisphere after the capital in the way of agri-
cultural and mineral resources has been ex-
hausted, as 1t must be soon. He will disappear.
The natural question is by what process? 1t is
very evident. When a superior race becomes
poor and thereby unable to maintain its
superiority, it lapses into the condition of the
poor white. If you will journey through the
south and take notice of the manner in which
such conditions as those have become opera
tive. you will perceive that the Caucasian does
in this way become thriftless, incapable of ex-
ertion and eventually approaching in type to
the savage. In other words, he loses his status
in the scale of creation.
Through the progressive exhaustion Of the
other will necessarily become uninhabitable be-
cause it will be incapable of supportinga popu-
lation- Thus will come about the depOpulation
of one state after anOther--of course by slow