The daily telegram. [volume] (Clarksburg, W. Va.) 1901-1926, 1916-04-15
Worlds Market Basket
Need Meier be Menaced

per acre as England and Germany. we
could supply the world with two-thirds
OF Its flour. II we produced as much
corn to the acre as they do, we could
double the worlds supply of that prod
uct.
To-day the United States has a total
cereal crop OF 5000. 900, 900 bushels.
We're all OF our arabic land under Gull
tivation and producing only according
to our present standard, which is less
than half as high as that of western
Europe. we could add enough cereals
TO take care Of an additional popula-
ton the size Of that Of Europe.
when one has lived on land, as the
writer has done. which, at the end of
the Civil war, did not produce more
than eight bushels OF wheat and twenty
bushels of corn to the acre, and has
seen this land produce as high as
forty-five bushels OF wheat and a hun
dred bushels corn. 1t is difficult to take
any other than an optimistic view OF
the possibilities OF American agricul-
ture.
Infinite Possibilities.
Not only are there infinite POSSIBLE
tiles yet untouched in our own country.
but also In most of the other countries
OF the earth as well. For instance.
Russia. that land for which nature has
done so much. endowing it with food
producing possibilities such as few
other countries possess, has a wheat
yield OF only ten bushels to the acre.
When the day comes, as come It
certainly will, that Russia produces
as much per acre as Germany and
England, and when the untold millions
OF acres OF undeveloped land are
opened up and settled, as they are
destined to be. alone 1t can supply the
worlds present needs in cereals except
rice and corn.
Nor is that all. Any one who has
travelled through the tropics, studying
the production OF foodstuffs there at
flrst hand, cannot fail to understand
that vast potential food sources still
lie untouched. The wonderful discoy-
cries OF Ross and Reed and their CO.
ad1utors, Of the methods Of preventing
malaria and yellow fever, followed by
the mastery Of the secrets of the bu-
bonic plague and beriberi, and the an
plication OF these lessons in Cuba. at
Panama. and elsewhere in the tropical
world, have made It possible for civil
Lied man to open up gardens of plenty
OF which he never before dreamed.
Jungles Can Be Used.
Untold millions OF acres of tlensest
jungles are, so far as man is con-
cerned, nothing more than lands of in
finite richness wasting their sweetness
upon the desert air of unutilized on
portunities.
Not long ago I visited the ruins of
Quitigua, in Guatemala. The United
Fruit Company had set apart several
hundred acres as reservation for the
protection Of the ruins. The Jungle
forest Of the reservation, bordering the
banana clearings, lowered like a green
wall a hundred feet high, and the nm
dergrowth was so dense that no man
could penetrate it save by cutting his
way through with a machete.
There saw the contrast between
the past and the future Of the tropical
world. The banana plantations,
stretching for miles and miles up and
down the Motaga river valley, were
producing millions of punches of ba-
nanas, where but a. few years before
had existed the safe sort of Jungle nj
that at Quirigua."