Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1918-02-17
THE MASTERS.
palling.

The wheat plant has many enemies.
Not only man, but also great
variety of other organisms have learn
ed that it is good to eat Plant para
sites are numerous and on the in
crease. Several are distributed at
planting time on the seed. Rusts,
smuts, molds mildews. scabs, bacteria
and half-dozen other plant parasites
take, each one, their annual toll, and
the aggregate is enormous Chinch
bugs, aphides, Hessian fly, grass hop
pers, weevils, wire worms and other
insects destroy as much omer; perhaps,
more than much more. Then there
are the grain-eating birds and the
field rodents, not a small item, while
houses and barns, hog sheds and cat
tie ranches, mills and graneries, often
swarm with rats and mice, enormous
ly prolific and more destructive than
an army, except perhaps German
army. Man gets what is left, and the
mass of mankind never give a mo-
ment's thought to the fact that often
they get less than half the crop, and
even under the most favorable con-
dit0ns never a full crop, or to the
further fact that civilized man lives
so nearly from hand to mouth and
now depends so much on International
comfy for the rapid transfer of food
as needed from land to land, that by
a general failure of foodstuffs for but
q single reason, or by local failure
coupled with the systematic destruc-
ton of merchant shipping, as in the
present war, whole nations may be
reduced suddenly to the verge of
starvation.
The waste due to rats and mice
alone would feed an army More
over, if we could dispose of these ro-
dents, which are dangerous as we'll
as destructive, and it is quite possible
to do so by rebuilding our storehouses
and by the. systematic use of traps
and of poison, we could then eliminate
most of our millions of cats and dogs,
and thereby save enough to feed an
other army, to mitigate the poverty
in our midst, or to feed all those
European peoples whom pan-German
greed has reduced to the verge of
starvation.
Looking toward the future, it seems
likely that following this war there
will be world-shortage of wheat for
many years. European fields, agricul-
tural implements, stock, farm build
ings and farm laborers have been de,
stroyed in such enormous numbers
and over such a large area that to
bring agriculture, wheat culture in
cluded, back to its old thrift, especial
ly in Belgium, France, Germany, Aus
tria, Rumania, the Balkans and West
ern Russia, will be the task of years
Moreover, the use of high explosives
having enormously increased in this
war, we must not lose sight of the
fact that the fixed nitrogen so es-
sential to the growth of the wheat
plant will be harder than ever to Oh
tain, since every shot from a gun con-
verts just SO much of expensive agri-
cultural substance into inert and
poisonous gases. Truly man is the
worst destroyer, and kings and com
mercial men who begin wars are the
greatest criminals on the face of the
earth. In view of this prospective
world-shortage of wheat for at least a
decade and probably a much longer
period, and also because our own pop
ulation will probably increase from
100,000,0OO to one hundred end forty
million by the beginning of the second
half of the century, we must plan to
grow in the United States nearly or
quite double our present annual wheat
crop, or, in other words, more than
120,OOOOOO bushels annually @