Year: 1877

LIE 1AdAVoI1ON OF AMERICAN WHEAT


FIELDS


Many years ago an English writer named
Nautilus publshe0a book in which he main
tanned that population increased in a geo.
metrlcal ratio, and sustenance in an arith-
metlcal ratio; in other words, that starva-
ton would be the ultimate fate of large
proportion of the worlds Inhabitants. We
do not propose to combat this exploded the
ory it is sufficient to remark that the
worlds food is constantly increasing, not
only in quality, but in the relative amount
to each inlabitant. But Malthus was the
virtual founder of a large school of political
economists who exist in our day, and per-
sist in taking the most gloomy view of
things terrestrial. These philosophers hold
that labor can only be worth what it takes
to feed the laborer, and that while nations
may protect the persons of their citizens,
they have no right to protect their indus
tries. But the great forte Of this school is
in making prophecies in fact, it is a ''school
of prophets" They prophesied our panic
twenty years before it occurred, and have
uniformly forseen the terrible results sure to
follow from our national sins. Just now
the subject that claims their prophetic atten-
ton is the gradual exhaustion of our Amer
lean wheat fields.


At first sight such proposition might
seem the very height of follY, but the car
nestness with which it is urged shows that
it is really believed by its propounders. Of
course we all know that successive crops of
wheat cannot be raised from the same soil
without impairing its Wheat-producing quail
titles. The wheat berry contains some of
the most essential constituents of the soil,
and a perpetual drain of these without sup
plying in some other form what is taken
away, is sure to end in eventual barrenness.
This is conceded by everybody, but some of
our gloomy economists ask still more. They
assert that even new land will not yield the
crops which it once did, or in other words.
that the prolific character OF the wheat plant
is decreasing, and that the old average num-
ber Of bushels per acre is becoming notice
ably less. 1t Is stated that such atmospher-
ic changes have been. and are taking place
do w SetttSG tlo uooA VI t1llo
fact, sections are pointed out where new
land hardly pays for cultivation when sown
with wheat, whereas, twenty-five years ago,
land in the same vieinitE yielded from forty
to fifty bushels per acre. This is said to be
particularly true of Northern Illinois, which
was once one of the wheat fields of the
country.


Now this fact is nndeniably true. New
land in Northern Illinois does net yield one
half the crop of. wheat that such land did a
quarter of Il century since; butt is the COR
rect solution given? Are there not other
| agencies which have caused this difference
/ in productiveness besides the one aseribed
by the atmospheric theory? We think that
/ some of the circumstances of the case have
not received due considerations When first
broken up by the march of civilization, 1.-The
prairies of the West had been receiving for
wears vast deposits of ash resulting from
nrairie fires. Now this ash contains eXactly
the constituents required for The nnrtures of
tae wheat berry, and this tact will account
for the luxuriant cropsof early days. What
is now termed ssncw lando in these old sec
tiosas. is hardly such, in the sense that it was
yea,s ago, for although it may never have
| been. broken up, by. thA plow- its heritage has