The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 18??-1935, 1911-04-28
By HENRY G. CATLIN.


We are beginning to realize that
our estate has bounds, that it's yearly
production has limit, and that the
problem of making the best of our
lands is one which this generation
must take up.
Ugly facts are impressing them
selves upon us. A steadily increas-
ing population, diminishing fertility
of our cultivated acres, rapid de-
crease in the quantity of our virgin
lands susceptible of cultivation, the
certainty that, unless we make bet
ter use of what we have, it will be
but little time before we must i'm
port our food, are the alarming
symptoms Of an incipient economic
disease, which, unless arrested, must
inevitably result in loss of potential
energy and stunt our National growth.
Every year new lands come under
the plow to undergo the same pro-
cess of degeneration. Every year
the virgin land decreases and in ever
increasing ratio.Our attention is dir
ected to bringing new land into bear
ing. Irrigation of arid and reclama-
ton of swamp lands by drainage are
praiseworthy and excellent endeav-
ors, but the best results from both
combined cannot make good what we
are losing. When we have irrigated
every acre to which water may be
brought and have reclaimed every
acre possible of cultivation, the loss
in the fertility of our older lands and
the growing demands of an increasing
population will more than Offset the
results of these labors.
With every acre susceptible of cul-
tivation under crop, if the yield of
! food products grows less and the
months to be fed more, the percent
ages of decrease of the one and in
crease of the other will regulate the
4 sef-sustaining population of the I'm
'ited States, the limit Of the well-be-
ing of it's people; and, as these fact
ors vary, it begs the question to say
that commerce, or manufacture, or
/ both combined can permanently af-
! feet this, buy our bread and meat
| Where are the lands that may con-
tinue to feed us? The increase of
population is worldwide. Where the
ever-augmenting food demands Of
Europe, the Americas, Australia, Asia,
and Africa may in the future, even
in the next fifty years, be satisfied
is something for serious contempla-
ton, but that is world matter. Let
us look to it that we defer competing
in the general market for our food
as long as possible. Let us be self
sustaining to the limit of our cap
acity
, 1t is automatic that the country
that feeds it's people from it's own
soil may measure it's population, it's
welfare, and prosperity by the acre
age available for sustenance. High
or low tariff Or free trade, corpora
ton regulation, the varying issue of
yesterday, to-day, or tomorrow;
whether the Government be Republi-
can, Democratic, or Socialistic, good
or bad government, are but of tenn
porary import and subject to change;
these but refer to the conduct of ma
tional life. That we have food ade
quate for our needs and possibili-
ties is a condition precedent to life
itself.
To the approximate correctness of
this statement of the situation the
statistics of the General Government,
those of every State experimental
farm, OI6r COTTODOTdIlNo eNluellCo
Every intelligent farmer knows, of
his own knowledge, the truth of it.
Every housewife who buys meat or
eggs, vegetables or bread, has the
effect before her even if the cause
of the advancing prices be obscure,
The complex relations of modern
life rarely allow of the connection OF
a rise in price with single cause.
That food products are advancing in
price there are many reasons for. 1t
is due to the tariff, we hear, or to the
increased output of gold, the move
ment from the farm to the jury but,
if it takes relatively the same labor
to produce forty bushels of corn or
fourteen bushels of wheat now that
it did before to make eighty bushels
of corn and twenty-four bushels of
wheat, evidently that fact has bear
ing on the subject.
With the hour, the day, the sea-
son, heat or cold, excess of moisture