The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1905-11-24

work Of canals, large ana small, anu
stored in reservoirs, and every drop
devoted to beneficial use, use that
will be SO valuable that its value for
navigation will count for nothing in
comparison. 1t may be great many
years before this will happen, but 1t
Is certain to come. In no other way
can the vast population with which
this country will teen within a few
hundred years be provided with the
food to sustain it.
Japan, from her total area of 147,-
655 square miles, of which only $4,000
are cultivated, collected an annual
revenue before the war with Russia
began of $121, 433,725 and her exports
amounted to $124,20S,923.
The average population per square
mile of Japan is 299.76, but only one
seventh of her territory is actually
under cultivation.
A Thousand Miles Square.
A section of our own country con-
tanned within square extending one
thousand miles north from New Or
leans and one thousand miles west
from Pittsburg, and containing one
million square miles, if as densely
populated as Japan, would sustain a
population of 300,OOO,OOO; but much
larger proportion of this great square
in the center of the United States
could be intensely farmed than in
Japan, where only one-seventh of the
total area is cultivated.
On the 10000 square miles of land
in Japan that is actually farmed, they
sustain 30,O0O,O00 farmers. 1t is
safe estimate that at least one-half of
the thousand mile square central sec
ton of the United States above des-
cribed could be as closely cultivated
as the productive fields of Japan.
Those Japanese fields sustain over
fifteen hundred people to the square
mile. At the same ratio of popula ton.
our own thousand mile square central
section would sustain 75O,OO0,OO0 of
farming population alone.
A population of over fifteen hundred
to the square mile sustained by agri-
culture seems to the ordinary mind in
credible; but on the Island of jersey
off the English coast, a population of
over thirteen hundred to me square
mile is sustained by out of door agri-
culture in climate by no means best
1t must be borne in mind that we are
talking now of the possibilities of
future development, and the facts and
figures above given will no doubt be
looked upon as utterly chimerical by
the average reader.
Degeneracy in England.
Bear in mind however, again. that
they are based only upon the assump-
ton that we in this country should at
tain to point of development already
reached by the japanese people, and
on which rests their national strength.
1t is true that our development dur
ing the last half-century has not been
towards the land We have followed
in the footsteps of England, rather
than Japan; and while, in fifty years,
Japan has restored the land to her
people and rooted them to the soil in
homes Of their own, England has
done the contrary. She has driven
her yeomanry from the farms to the
cities, where they have become fac
tory operatives, and degenerated
and mentally to such a de-
gree that the degeneracy of her citi-
now presents itself to the
statesmen of England as a most ap-
palling problem.
We are doing the same thing, but
we are not. as yet, feeling the effects
of it so severely because we have still
a larger proportion of our people on
the land.
Back to the Land.
We have much to do to reverse the
Of In fp1,s ftsnr
the cities back to the land-from the
be imagined that it is necessary, in
workers 10 our cities or in our fac
tories should quit their present en-
ployment and become farmers. All
that is necessary is that the facilities
for rapid transportation afforded by
our trolley system should be availed
of to plant every factory family upon
at least an acre of land.
Let that be done, and the problem
is practically solved no matter
though the acre be used for nothing
but to raise chickens and keep a goat.
The children of the family will have
fresh air and sunshine and pure milk,
and will grow up to be healthy men
and women.
The lever with which we must
move our population back to the land
must be the public school system.
Gardens and Handicraft.
Every child in the public schools,
boy or girl, must be trained from it's
earliest days of school life to cult |
vate the ground and make things
grow in garden, and to raise poul-
try, and do all that needs to be done
to provide the food for family from
an acre Of land.
Add to this training in simple |
sloyd work and home handicraft, |
cooking and sewing and making things |
for the home. and you wiz have Gre
ated the impulse in the minds of the |
millions of our children |
which will lead them to shun the
bricks and the asphalt, the slums and |
the tenements, as they would shun |
the plague, and flee from them far |
enough into the country to have an |
acre at least for a home and gar
den.
Create this impulse in the minds of |
our children, the millions upon mil
lions of them who are attending, and |
will attend, our public schools, and |
they will find way to solve all the
rest of the problem, how to get the i
land, and how to get back and forth
to it, if they continue to work in the
city or the factory.