The Republican journal., 1911-06-22
JOLTS FOR THE FARMER.
At Least for Those Who Do Their Farm
ING in America.

ing in America.
1.-THE farmers of America like to fee
that they are the most aggressive in the
world, and thousands of them are un
questionably entitled to this distinction, -
writes C. S. Funk, general manager Of
the International Harvester Company, in
the Woman's World, "but the yield from
our farms per acre as compared with the
results obtained in other countries shows
the American farmer in most sorry
light.
"a small English farm which has been
growing crops for upward of thousand
years will produce twenty-five to thirty
bushels of wheat per acre. whereas
thousands of our farmers with much
better soil are producing half that amount
per acre.
ga German farmer will easily raise
three times as much in dollar value per
acre as an American farmer. The
Japanese, with their little garden-like
patches, get results out of comparative
ly barren land which would astound the
average farmer of our country. Every
foot of their soil grows something and
there is absolutely no waste.
1.-The French farmer enforces rigid
economy on his farm, loses no time, fer
tilizes his land faithfully and farms on a
rigid system. Belgium, Switzerland and
many of the smaller countries supply ten
times more people to the square mile
than we care for under our present
methods.
''1s the American farmer failure? Is
our boosted agricultural supremacy a
lie? Something is wrong. Like spend
thrift whose, fortune is so huge that he
needs never consider his expenditures
we have raised our billions of bushels of
grain and rested content with the fact of
our colossal revenue and never bother
ing much over the cost per unit of vol
ume. We have patted ourselves upon
our rural back, deluded with the notion
that we understand the trade of bread
raising.
"But we are bunglers; we do not know
our job. We have been blessed with a
bountiful soil and whatever it has yielded
must be credited to nature and not to
ourselves. Unless we improve our meth
DDS we will soon exhaust the mighty
chance which Providence bestowed upon
the American settler We are still primi-
tive; we are the most wasteful, the most
self-satisfied, the most foolhardy land
owners on earth. Figures count and the
figures on the grain yield of the nation
for the last fifty or sixty years are about
as stiff set of jolts as ever landed on
our self-complacency.
I'm 1866 our average corn Weld was
1913 bushels; in 1909 latter thirty-five
years, mind you) our average corn Weld
was only 25.5 bushels an acre. In 1869
we produced 1876 bushels of wheat an
acre; in 1891 we produced 1873 bushels
an acre, and in 1909 our average wheat
yield was only 1873 bushels. And as for
oats, in 1866 our average yield was 3O.2
bushels and in 1909 only 1913 bushels.
whats the matter with us? Our Ag-
ricultural Department has been sending
out millions of dollars worth of prime
seed for years; and yet we have practi-
cally shown no improvement after almost
half century of farming endeavor. We
are put to shame by the showing of the
English, French, Dutch, Belgians anc
Germans.
eve have better facilities and better
utilities. We have better land and more
OF 1T, yet we stand indicted as the most
reckless and improvident of all the fooc
producing nations. It's time to ring the
school bell and teach a few lessons ir
common sense and conservation. It's
time to stop Dragging to the Old World
and to start learning from her broader
experience.