Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1908-10-01

!, corners, its abused soil and its thin
product The last makes room for
the new population. whose added
, product will help to restore our place
as an exporter of foodstuffs. The fruit
farmer, the truck farmer, every cul-
tivator of the soil who has specialized
his work has learned to put these
rules into practice as a matter Of
course. How to impress their force
upon the thirty million or more per-
sons who cultivate the land in this
country is the problem. 1t is no longer
one of method. Science has settled
that, and is adding more and more of
value every year. 1t is merely how to
move the farmer to apply to his own
profit and the rescue of the nation
the better methods that are familiar
story.
1T should appeal TO him that the
modern system is both a money
maker and a labor-saver. The cost of
rent and production for continuous
wheat cropping averages $3.50 per
acre. When. therefore, the farmer
obtains, as so many of those in the
northwest do, a yield of eight or ten
bushels per acre, it just about meets,
at average farm prices, the cost of
production, leaving him either no.
thing at all for his years toll or else
a margin OF debt For the same
amount of labor, covering the same
time but intelligently applied TO
smaller area, he might esily produce
by improved methods twenty bushels
per acre, leaving him profit of over
SIP. The not unreasonable yield of
2S bushels would net him $40, which
! is ten per cent on a valuation of 5000
per acre for his land. This gigantic
waste, applying the same measure to
the production of the entire country,
is going on every year. If such asso-
Citations as this congress can stop it,
it will pay for building two Panama
canals every year; it will in two
years more than pay the estimated
expense of improving every available
waterway in the United States; it
will save more money to the farmer
than the railroads could if they
carried all his grain to market free of,
charge.
| What is true of wheat is true of
all the other products of the farm.
The splendid work done in this state
where we are met is to the point. The
average yield of corn i'll Wisconsin
has been raised, by the application of
scientific methods, from q to As
bushels per acre. The new value thus
created in a single state for a single
year amounts to about $15,000,000 |
need not go into other details, be-
cause they are similar in kind and
anyone may examine them for him
self. Such increase of the national
wealth, such additional reward of Ia
bor waits upon the adoption of the
best methods in every department of
agriculture. Other peoples have been
quicker to learn it than we. Den
mark has an area of less than $4,000
square miles a little less than one
fifth that of Minnesota, and a popula.
tion in 1906 or 2,605,26S. Only 80 per
cent Of her area is productive, and
her population is 167 per square mile
Yet in 1906 she sent abroad over $50
100000 worth of her home product of
provisions and eggs. Great Britain
bought from her that year butter to
the amount of $48,0OO,O0O and bacon
worth over $21 700, 600. 1t is interest
ing in this connection to note that,
though her population is so dense,
there were in 1905 put 754 men and
60 women in her penItentiaries.
The Netherlands.
The Netherlands is a still more
closely compacted population of 5,772,-
237 on an area of 1858 square miles,
or 448 per square mile. The advant-
age Of this is that it forces small
holdings and a more thorough tiIlage.
The average wheat yield in the Meth.
erlands is 34.18 bushels as against
our IA; she produces an average of
531 bushels Of oats per acre, when
we are satisfied with 23.7 bushels in
1907 and an average of less than 80
bushels for the preceding ten years );
her farmers gather 232 bushels of po-
tatoes from every acre so planted,
while in this country, with soil cap
able of fabulous yields, we took in
95.4 bushels last year and averaged a
trifle less than SO bushels for the last
six years. The difference between
95 and 230 bushels, at so cents. a
bushel, is over $50 per acre.
Rather a heavy loss to pay
for poor farming! 1t is not to be
wondered at that the Netherlands,
hardly larger than a big county out
west, after deducting enough for
home consumption, exported more
than $140,0OOO0O worth of cereals,
flour, butter and cheese; and that her
people do not have to pay any poor
rates.
ITO such height we can bring
the productivity of many of our own
fields. When we have done so, and
only then, will the specters that
haunt our future vanish and the
questions that it now puts to US re-
ceive an answer worthy of men care
full of their future and thoughtful for
their race. Every respectable author
ity on agriculture in the country will
indOrse this statement. But at pres
ent we are doing little practically, out
on the land, among the farmers to