Evening journal. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1907-1913, 1908-01-08
4 Square Deal For the Soil.
tBy Samuel w. Allerton.D
Continued from yesterday }

/
Right from the start ! made up my
mind TO buy good farms and keep
them and run them for profit. This
meant that l looked at them as long
time investment, not as something on
which to speculate or make quick
turn. In other words, the task be-
fore me was that of building up and
making the farms better each year
stronger in their ability to produce
profitable crops How many farmers
treat their land in this way? Fewer,
by far, than you would supposed OF
course, most of them intend to do this
but there is wide gap between
their intentions and their practice. 1t
is no ezaggeration to say that the ma
| jority of farmers in this country are
living on their principal" instead of
their interest" so far as their treat
ment of their soil is concerned; they
are raising fair to excellent crops,
putting up good buildings and making,
perhaps, a fine showing on the profit
side of the ledger, butt doing this
they are literally bankrupting the soil
-robbing it of the capacity to keep
up the pace of production in the flu
ture.
! In any state Of the union, from the
richest to the poorest, the casual OBJ
server can see for himself how the
soil is being bankrupted by heavy
cropping and poor fertilization. There
are tracts in Virginia, for example
where farm after farm can be bought
at an almost absurd price. Not very
| long ago these same acres were the
pride of the Old Dominion State and
produced fortunes to their owners in
their unfailing tobacco crops. Now
they are next door to useless as tilla-
BILE land and about all their value is in
| the way of fine scenery. They have
been depleted by taking from them
the elements required to grow crops.
while comparatively nothing has been
put back into them to prevent bank
ruptcy. The same thing can be seen
In Southern Illinois, where there are
large districts which produce scant
crops and where farms can be bought
at one-third--even fourth--of the
price of good farm lands in the mid
die and northern part of the state.
Ordinarily these Southern Illinois
farms were nearly, il not fully, as
productive as any in the state They
have been under the give-nothing-and-
take everything system of cultivation,
and the result is that the land has
been put out of business because of
mistreatment And so you will find
it in every state where the land has
been worked on this plan for any
considerable number of years.
But we are not left to size up in a
general way the results of this sui
cidal method of land cultivation; the
scientists who are working in the
field of agriculture have produced
some very exact information which
tells the story in a pointed and a
precise way. A careful reading of
these authorities points to the fact
that the grain crops are reducing
the productiveness of the soil, under
present methods of cultivation, at the
rate of two per cent. year Few
men in America have gone into the
subject more deeply than Professor
Hopkins, of the University of Illinois,
and he does not hesitate to declare
his conviction that, if we keep on
farming as we are now doing it in
Illinois, the state will be an unpro-
ductive desert within a century He