Camas Prairie chronicle. [volume] (Cottonwood, Idaho) 1901-1917, 1917-03-30
Farmers Out
OF A Job
by James HI. Collins
Continued from last week.
Continued from last week.
The Farms Deteriorate

'"'N 1hO SOuHLAJ CuuICu anu SCHOOL
But an invisible process of decay il
also going on, for the soil is being rob
bed by tenants who fail to put bach
humus and fertility. The tenant sys
tenn is held to be mainly responsible
for decreased yields in some of ou1
richest farming states, and it comes
just at period when soil conservation
has developed as a serious problem,
calling for better farming methods.
The man who owns land can confident.
ly make his soil his savings bank,
blowing under green crops, applying
lime, and buying fertilizer, because he
knows that he will draw out these long.
time deposits in increased crops five
and ten years hence But the tenant
has no such incentive for making de.
posts at interest in rented soil, and
tenant farming is so new in the United
States that we have still to develop
systems like those followed abroad,
where the departing tenant receives a
money allowance for whatever unused
fertility he has left in the soil by sys-
tematic soil building and conservation.
Down in his heart, John Maggie often
wishes that he had never left the old
place. He would gladly go back to-
morrow. But he cannot get back!
That is one of the tragic phases of the
thing that has happened to him. The
farm has been leased, it is William
Hicks for term of years, and there
he must idle in town, eating out his
soul.
His wife is buster and happier than
ever before. She has a wonderful new
house to manage, with every modern
convenience, and to this wholesome
outlet for her energy there is added
the stimulus of club meetings, church
life, moving pictures, society. Every
day her health and spirits improve.
But John Maggie is like a powerful
engine racing at full speed with free
clutch, tearing himself to pieces. He
sours on life and becomes narrow and
selfsh-how much so let the people in
a thousand Corn Belt towns testify.
Once they sought the retired farmer
as fellow-citizen. Now they know
he is nuisance and a danger, and
would be glad to get rid of him. In
fact, the Corn Belt is quietly taking
steps to get rid Of him, and he himself
is also working out broader scheme
of existence.
The lumber trade publisher who
wanted to know why lumber dealers
in corn belt towns were selling less
building material than they used to is
busy on one angle of the retired farm
er problem. He found this question
taking him from one thing to another,
until finally it was clear that decreas-
ed lumber sales were rooted in a wide
spread stagnation of country commu,
mites, and the lumber business was
the same-namely, broad community
development.
-Four of our corn belt states showed
decrease in rural population at the
last census. Many a country neigh
borhood is shabby and down at the
heels, even if it happens to be holding
its own in population.
1t was found that the lumber dealer
whose business had fallen off most was
usually one who lived in a shabby
community, where other business was
in the same state of decay. If the
community was doing we'll. So was
the dry goods merchant, and the news
paper publisher. If the town where
they did business was prosperous, SO
was the countryside roundabout. Ev-
erybody seemed to be tied up with the
same string. If the lumber dealer
was not prosperous, neither was the
dry-goods man, nor the town, nor the
countryside And usually that town
was doing nothing to promote the
countryside. Perhaps it had hustled
for retired farmers few years before,
and got colony of them, and SO as
sisted in the process of decay that was
pulling down the farms, and rural
schools and churches, and sapping the
towns trade.
This publisher hired a man and sent
him on the road to talk with lumber