The Green Forest tribune., 1911-07-21

where we are. Ee have got to recrify our methods, get in line with natures ways and build anew on the foundar tion of our wasted soil and we must make good" because we owe it to our country, to ourselves and to pos terity We can not justify our rag ged methods leading to soil plunder on grounds of absolute possession, personal liberty and privilege to do with our own as we will. A compelling force, law compelling each man to shape his system of land husbandry in such a way it leaves the soil as good or better when he began, would be eminently just and in full harmony with the conservation spirit of the age. l venture to predict that such a legislative movement will be on foot in portions of our country before the present generation passes. But how much better it would be if each individual did his duty without com pulsion and before public sentiment has forced chafing regulations Qaws) upon him. But the complexity of so, ciety, economy, surely thickens with it's needs. We force chafing regula tions upon ourselves.
 What shall be done to remedy the situation? We'll, the remedy is sim pie. Apply the most natural curative. If you have been hauling your stock of fertility to the markets every year, stop it. Turn this animal draft upon your resources (soiD into that form of product that will leave fertility at home. Produce pork, dairy products, beef, mutton and wool, horses, mules and live stock in general. The fer tilizer ingredients in the carcass of an animal is relatively very small in quantity while the fertilizer lngredi- ents in the roughage and concentrates that this animal has consumed is more than a hundred times as great. The fertility remains in the form of manure to be retuSned to the soil to be used in making the next crop and the next and so on.
 If you have been destroying that vital force-humus, by wasteful methods, stop it. Restore the soil supply by putting organic matter back into thes soil. Apply manure, blow under all cotton ana corn stalks, grass, leaves and weeds. Flow under green crops. Stop growing corn or cotton every year and rest the soil with crops of small grain peas, beans, vetches or, better still, grasses and clovers. Your live stock will turn all of this into a salable product. If ditches have been cut in your fields, stop them. You never can bring your soil back from the great delta in the Gulf of Mexico. Stop it from going there. If land is too steep to grow corn without grave danger of wash ing don't grow corn. There are other crops that will pay. Grow corn, gut ter the soil to rock bed and you will have to quit corn and all other crops as well. Why not then be reasonable. Do it right.
 Have you found your soil to be so low in productivity that you must dope it? And you apply patent medi cine in the form of artificial (commer- ciaD fertilizer? If so stop it. The soil grows rapidly poorer and your yields fall off in spite of your efforts to increase them.
 These are serious matters. They justly claim the attention of every tiller of the soil. Consider the past and you see declining soils and de- creasing yields. Turn and lock into the future and you behold the same sad condition. Thousands of men view the situation; realize it's gravity, comprehend fully the signs of the times, but yet they reason, " Tie cost of improved methods is too great I can't succeed" Consider this Re call to mind all the instances that you ever saw or heard of, of men improv- ing their soil and keeping up it's yield ing capacity and you find in every instance a man either well-to-do or more so than his neighhor Why? Because better farming pays better The increasement in yields more than offsets the additional expense involv- ed in better treatment of the soil The sooner you change the sooner you begin to increase your profits. The longer you wait the more eX pensive the methods necessary and the smaller the increasement in re- turns. Now these are not theories They are conditicSs which we have to face. We might better face them bravely. How much better it would be had we begun when the soil was still virgin. The best we can do now is to begin now.