New Iberia enterprise and independent observer. (New Iberia, La.) 1902-1944, 1905-11-11

nual loss to the people of the United
States of more than $500, 900, 600.
This is the value Of the produce that
is deliberately seized upon and de-
stroyed year after year by the insect
marauders of this invincible republic.
If the assessment this represents were
levied in the form Of a poll tax it
would cost every voter in the United
States something like fifty dollars a
year. But however it may be divided
or distributed, this approximate bill
lion dollars is tax which the nation
is obliged to pay each year to the
grasshoppers and the bugs and the
worms. To support these predatory
insects costs US more than it does to
support the entire United States Gov
eminent, and this, be it remembered,
includes not only the army and the
navy, but patriotic band of a million
pensioners besides.
As in the days of Moses every tiller
of the soil was called upon to contri-
butte one tenth of his produce to the
Levites, so to-day the farmers OF Am
erica pay their tithes to the insects
the Levites of the field. Following
in the footsteps of the bonded Israe-
lites the field workers of other nations
through many succeeding generations
and dynasties, gave of their crops the
traditional one tenth, in order that
the parasites of society might live and
prosper. But in time they grew re-
belliously sick of this unworthy taxa
ton and cast it from them; yet al
though the American farmer, in this
heyday of liberty and enlightenment,
is beholden to no one save OF his own
choosing, he is powerless to escape the
yearly 1.-THE that the insects, these Lee
vites of the field, demand OF him with
Unsuitable persistence and with the al
ways accompanying menace OF increas-
ed tribute. And would we know what
this 1.-THE, this tenth, means in
terms of Iand-what it means for the
farmer to give up one acre in ten for
the purpose of meeting this tax-let
US but bear in mind that ten per cent
of the total farm lands of the United
States, not including those devoted to
live stock, amounts to nothing less
than fifty million acres.
Fifty million acres is equal so the
combined area of all the New England
States, with New Jersey, Delaware,
and the District of Columbia thrown
in. If planted in grain, fruits and
vegetables this area would be more
than sufficient to supply ten million
families. All of the wheat produced
in the United States, which is not
only enough to give our eighty mil
lion people their daily bread, but
helps also to feed the hungry mouths
of other lands to the extent of several
million barrels of -four year, is
raised on total area of only a little
over fifty million acres. In other and
more impressive words, Our insects
destroy the yield of as much land as
is required for the growing of our en-
tire wheat crop,
And what are these insects, these
pests, these ravages, these enemies of
the race that lay us under bondage and
hold before us the constant threat of
starvation? Their name is legion.
Their kinds and varieties are without
Misunderstanding things and flying
things and things that hop and jump
flies and worms, moths and bugs and
beetles and maggots, lice, midges,
grubs, and ants and weevils, varied
and myriad host of pillagers and de-
spoilers, biting, boring, singing. and
devouring; attacking by night and by
day, underground and overhead, open
ly and stealthily and from the am
bush of fruit and bark and pendent
leaves. Their number is countless be-
yond the proverbial sands of the
shore, and their presence is every
where.
Plant potato crop in virgin soil,
hundred miles-a thousand miles
from any other potato field, and 10!
there is the potato bug. Set out an
apple orchard, and when the trees are
ready TO bear, behold the codling
moth is lying in wait to lay its eggs
upon the fruit. There is not single
product of the earth designed for
mans food that is not without its
special insect enemies. And lest the
1.-THE demanded by these Levities OF
the field should not be forth coming,
care is taken that every growing
thing shall have not merely one col
lector of taxes not merely one kind
of insect to prey upon it-but dozen
or score or hundred as the nature
of the food may require.
There is perhaps no product that is
levied upon SO rapaciously and sc
numerously as the apple. More than
two hundred different kinds of insects
are constantly at work upon it. They
attack it from all points roots
the trunk, the bark, the stems, the
leaves, the blossoms, the fruit. The
woolly alphis is the leader of the at.
tack on the roots; canker worms and
caterpillers are the pace for depreda.
tions on the foliage, while the codline
moth is captain of the fruit raiders
and why the lot of them together dc
not devour the entire apple crop
trees, fruit, and all-is q mystery fol