The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-01-29
Agricultural Demagoguery.

Farmers Institutes are, when prop
erly conducted, among the most ettl-
cient helps in AGRICULTURAL progress.
But when a man gets into an institute
as q teacher and appeals to'the Ignor-
ance of his hearers, and, as the saying
is, talks to the gallery" the Institute
can be made the means of doing much
harm. An intelligent institute Worke:
in Illinois writes that he has been
called to lecture in the northern part
of the State, and that the president
has sent him printed slip called
"MaXims," by q certain professor,
which he says "were well received at
the Institutes" and our correspondent
sends us a printed copy and asks our
opinion These "maXimS' start but
with the exclamation God save our
soils from the fate of those in the older
States! To which we say Amen.
But what is taking the soils of Illinois
that way is systemless soil robbery.
1.-THE acid and phosphate fertilizer
frauds have paved their blightinG
march westward by colossal cemeteries
of bald hills and blistered fields.
s. Some false teachers design
eddy confound plant foods and soil
s!imulants. Water and nitrogen are
strictly plant foods. Nitric ana phoS-
phoric acids and lime are drastic soil
stimuIants impoverishing that they
may appear to temporarily strengthen.
Should occasional or petty
local authorities prevail against the
Cameron bulletin. issued by the WASH
ington Bureau of Soils, which asserts
in four places that our cultivated soils
are usually endowed with all the min
eral or earth plant foods needful for
the demands made upon them"' And
vet when the Investigations OF TINS
same Bureau OF Soils showed that the
statements of this bulletin were ali
wrong, the results were never pup
ljshed by the Bureau. but suppressed.
We could quote more from these
"maxims.' in which a little truth is
wrapped up in a mass of error ana
demagoguery But the above will 10
to show the character of them. VINO
the so called professor Is we do not
know. nor what institution claims him
as a professor. In some parts OIL the
East. whose desolation he mourns. the
good farmers, bv the use of these
phosphate fertilizers have brought
their lands TO a productiveneSs thar
rivals Illinois. We know men in the
blighted East who are averaging 10
bushels of wheat per acre on lands
that in our boyhood made 10 to 10
bushels while in the meantime the
lands of the West have been decreasing
in WELD. The bnghted cemeteries ana
bald hills he bemoans. became such
zers. and the fact that they are thus
blighted is the reason why Western
farmers are turning their attention 20
the means for restoring them. we
saw lands the past fall in southern
Illinois that are as badly run down
as any i'm the East or South. and their
ruin was not through fertilizers. but
through bad farming and notion that
Egypt was ineXhauStible. doubtless
much harm has been done by the IN
judicious dependence on fertilizers
merely to get the same crop year AFTER
year ffom-the same' land, but 1t was
not the use. but the misuse of the
fertilizers that did it. And all over
the West.1he lands are going the same
way through constant cultivation OF
corn after corn, and wheat after
wheat, until finally the fertilizers viii
have TO be used to restore them. IL
such stuff as many of these max
inns are, is to be taught to the farm
ers of Illinois. the sooner the lnstl-
tutes are abandoned the better.