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

3
our wage scale and revolutionizing our
industrial system. produce pig iron
cheaply enough to compete with Eu
rope. And forty or fifty years hence
with our enormously increased de.
mand for the metal that has made
progress possible, and our depletion OF
its supply. we shall be in no position
to meet the foreigner in trade or to
furnish from this source fund to pur-
chase food.
ut is sufficient to state conditions
thus broadly. They enforce their own
conclusions. All the important items
in consumption and in export show
that we have hard master to reckon
with by the middle of this century:
and that We must develop from some
quarter occupation and a food supply
for more than 10000, 900 additional
people. 1t should be such as will
maintain a standard of living no lower
than that which now prevails if we
are not to witness terrible social and
political commissions.
Farm Is Hope of Nation.
1T is as clear as any future event
can be that the farm is the only hope
Of our national salvation. Just as it
is today the real source of our wealth,
the handspring of our domestic COM
merce that exceeds the trade of all
Europe combined, so must we draw
upon it for coming needs. All else
suffers progressive exhaustion and will
be a poorer dependence a generation
hence than it is today The soil alone
renews itself, endures patiently, and
is capable of yielding increasing re-
wards to industry as agriculture con
forms more closely to the principles
that science and experience have de-
veloped. The products of the earth
and the population OF the earth may
increase together, so that the one will
support the other, 1t is the sole es-
to which Nautilus was forced long ago
because, in his time, the possibilities
of modern soil culture were not un-
derstood.
Here, then, is the problem, here the
labor for a Farmers Congress. This
is your work. You must show how to
make good the scarcity of food supply.
To this occupation the country must
look not only for bread but for en-
ployment, for the means of advance
ment, for stability of institutions and
for individual happiness. The farmer
must furnish an additional s600,00V,00
which we have seen will be necessary
by 1905 to sustain the people. The
task is stupendous. Yet it will not
be found very difficult if we go to
work in the right way.
The Farmers Problem.
II have stated the national problem
in terms of wheat; its solution ad-
mits of similar statement. The aver
age yield of wheat per acre in the
United States in 1907 was IA bushels.
The average for the last ten years
has been 1888 That is, in 1907 it
required 1921, 900 acres to produce
the 634,0S7,O00 bushels that we
raised. 1t is a disgraceful record.
About a century ago this was the az
erage production per acre of Great
Britain. After the. appointment of a
royal commission and campaign for
better methods of cultivation begun
over a hundred years ago, today the
fields in the United Kingdom, titled
for a thousand years, in a climate
whose excessive moisture is unfavor-
able to the wheat farmer, yield over
% bushels of wheat per acre. Ger
many, an agricultural country almost
since the time of Tacitus, produces
27.6 bushels per acre. Suppose that
the United States produced %
bushels, or double it's present show
ing. That would be no extraordin-
airy record, in view of what European
countries have done with inferior
soils and less favorable climates 1t
would have added 634,O0O,OOO bushels
to our product last year. Here we
perceive the answer to the question
that the future asks. Here we see how
the 200,000,000 people or whereabouts
in the year 1850 are to be fed. Here
we see where the money must come
from for our national support. 1t
must be earned by and paid to the
farmers of this country. Only thus
may we escape an economic calamity
more threatening and more real than
the people realize. 1t will not come by
wishing for it or by law-making or in
any other way than through labor in
telligently applied. 1t implies a great
ly different agriculture from that
which now prevails.
ITO reach an average yield of from
twenty to thirty bushels of wheat per
acre in this country is as feasible as
to increase capital by lending money
at interest. How it may be done has
been explained so often and is today
so thoroughly taught in every agricul-
tural college and at every experiment
station in the country that one al
most hesitates to repeat it. I am not
now referring to market gardening or
the intensive agriculture properly So
called by which marvellous results
have been obtained, which, in the Is
land of Jersey gives an annual in
come of $3.50 per acre. It is possible
to grow from 1000 to 1000 grains of
wheat from a single grain of seed.
There are rumors of experiments in
Russia with deep planting that leave
this far behind, and even hint at