Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1909-12-08
SAVE SOIL, is
CRY OF HOPKINS
State University Expert Opens
Eyes of the Farmers of
the County.
AT TAYLOR RIDGE MEETING
Declares and Proves That, Under the
Present Methods, Poverty Must
Come in Few Years.

Taylor Ridge, Dec. s-(SpeciaD
Inc farmers of Rock Island county
were fortunate yesterday in having an
opportunity to hear DR.. Cyril G. Hop
Klns, the soil expert of the state agri-
cultural school at Urbana. His topic
was Soil Fertility and Permanent Ag-
rlcuiture." His talk was along the
same general lines as the one he gave
IN Rock Island last spring before the
Broadway Mems club.
Mr. Hopkins takes issue with Score
tary Wilson of the department of ag-
r1culture and some other disciples Of
the glad mitt and optimists in general.
While he did not mention the veteran
member of Taft's cabinet yesterday, ne
did give the doctrines that "Tama Jim"
has been promoting a rude jolt and
at the same time he upset some of the
traditions that have been sacred to the
farmers of this community since the
day of the red man.
Not Believer In Perpetual Motion.
Professor Hopkins, to be brief, IS not
believer in the theory of perpetual
motion, neither does he believe we can
get something for nothing, at least for
period of many consecutive years.
He has the fortitude to assert that
what we take away from the soil we
must return to It in the same or some
other form, or eventually the land will
cease to yield. The great trouble is to
provide a perpetual supply of phos-
phoEls, which, of the various elements
req1Ted' FOR plant growth, is the first
to Become exhausted, as a rule, and is
the hardest to restore once it has been
taken away.
Professor Hopkins stated, and prov
ed TO the satisfaction of those who
heard him. that rotation of crops is not
a remedy for land exhaustion. He
even upset the tiBle-honored tradition
that a farmer. by raising stock enough
to eat all his grain and placing the
C2n@re back On the ground, can main
tain its fertility for an indefinite peri
cd. The phosphorus is carried away
in the bones and skins of the live
stock and in the grain. Scientists have
CURED exactly how much there is in
she average soil 10 the depth 20 which
it is plowed, and can tell. exactly. how
y-uch of given crop can be taken
: ON it before its power to produce
will become exhausted to the point
where it viii not ray work It.
Case ia maryland.
Or. Hopkins cited the case of land in
Maryland and Virginia, once highly
productive, that now has been entirely
abandoned. He had only recently TAX
a few miles of Washington at SO per
acre. IN other parts of the east there
are farms that within 20 or 80 years
have declined in price to less than
half and are growing yearly less valu-
able. Here in Illinois, the speaker !
said, many farms are producing less
than they did few years back, and,
with the present methods of working
hem. it is only matter of years when
they will be in the same condition as
The abandoned land in the east
DR.. Hopkins quoted statistics taken
over long periods of experimenting
With rotation Of crops on land in var
Gus places, with and without various
kinds of treatment. They invariably
showed that where the phosphorus con- |
.ent was kept up the yield was easily |
maintained, but where it was allowed |
% become exhausted, barrenness was
always the eventual result.
Likened to Bank Account.
The soils phosphorus was 1ikened |
o a bank account. 1t decreases so long |
rs checks are issued against it in the |
iorm of crop yields. Rotation simply |
Increases the humous or organic mat |
jer In the soil, which, in its decay, |
lastens the chemical action which sets !
rec the phosphorus in a form to be |
appropriated by young crops. Rota-
ion, by inducing larger yields, simply
Executes larger checks against the de-
Dosft of the land and hastens it's ulti
nate bankruptcy. Ordinary commercial
fertilizers, by promoting the chemical
action that dissolves the phosphorus,
FORKS in the same direction. only the
more quickly and disastrously.