The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-02-08

poorer and poorer, her soils depleted Iii l fertility, until nature in a kindly mood sent the wheat weevil, the chinch bug and the Hessian fly and drove her peo- pie from the. wheat fields into raising corn oats, barley, clover, alfalfa. cattle hogs and sheep, In other words we were compelled to diversity, and strange to say we found in a few years our soils began to grow more and more fertile and we could grow more wheat per acre than ever before. The same may be said of Illinois. When the writer came to that state over 40 years ago it was one vast corn field, stretching on row after row, corn, corn everywhere, until we have seen it sell for 10 cents per bushel, and in early days was freely used for winter fuel Our lands began to fail in fertility, our vaunted crop grew less and less until Providence in His wisdom and mercy sent the chinch bug, the corn root louse, the wire akh army worm, and various other pests that drove us from the fetish worship of King Corn to the same diversida- tion of crops that pervail in Iowa; our land become more and more productive, higher and higher in price, until the great body of our farm lands have in- creased in value from s20 and $30 per acre, up and up until now they are worth from $200 to $500 per acre, and
 
 Depend On Country
 That any one crop system leads to depletion of soil fertility is as well known as any other principle of ag- riculture. The future prosperity of Ala bama depends on the permanent fertility of her soil. If she loses that all is lost. If the God of nature in His infinite wis dom should say depart forever all fer tility from the soil af Alabama and your great state would hence forth be desert. No plant of living green would ever bless your barren plains and beau tiful hills. Should this fearful condition take place all property in the great state of Alabama. in the city and county as we'll would at once become valulcss. Desolation would reign supreme and your state and all it's noble institutions and various industries would only be known in history.
 "Yet what God could do by fiat tie people of the south by their one crop system have been doing by degrees for. 50 years, until even now we find many beautiful and once fertile fields in the south, that have failed to produce enough to pay for cultivation and are abandoned for agricultural purposes. Multiplied thousands of acres of Vfr- ginia lands, once productive and as fer tile as the richest lands of Alabama,
 
 original fertility by the curse of ono l crop system that they have been abaD . doned and reverted to the state for taxes.
 "Will your people take warning by I the common experience of the world, or go on and on in the open highway of financial depression and find ruin by the one crop system When Alabama comes ! to her own, which she surely will, her methods must be changed She cannot come by way of any one crop system, | but by bannered field of waving corn. and golden grain, by lowing herds of ell bred cattle. pastured and fed on | her sunkissed hills and fertile valleys, by fields of fattening hogs and bleating sheep, by meadows of clover and al- falfa, and other legumes to renew and make more and more fertile the soil.
 q have been travelling in the south 1 for nearly year in this .diversiRcation l movement, and previously have been over large portions of the north and west, and wish to go on record as say ing that the opportunities are greater | in the south for young and old, foi one and all, than anywhere else in ths world. Your soils are by nature fer l tile, your climate unsurpassed. youl people the most genial, kindly, hospita- ble, noble men and women, in all tn world. Your children, God bless them are just as intelligent just as bright.
 eyed and rosy checked as the children | of the north, where your money fol l 50 years has been building fine school houses and better roads, but too fal away to benefit you or yours. You nees more and better schoolhouses, more ant
 better roads. Get busy. Beat your ew1 record every year. Feed yourselves am live stock Keen s9O OO0 900 at ho1ne.' !