Part 35

Why not offer prizes for workers? Why not fill all of our executive and administrative government bodies with the best farmers, business men, carpenters, etc., instead of lawyers? Just think of it. Everyone knows lawyers are proverbially poor business men. Yet our Nation, states, counties and cities all are governed principally by men who privately are considered as inferior business men.

By compelling the lawyers by some labor, some successful work, to first prove their business ability and capacity, and making labor—work—the honest, real basis for the elevation of men and women to places of trust and profit, and by this course only can labor be exalted and every child in the land be led to look with pride and pleasure upon the laborers, who are the true bone and sinew of the world.

Preaching that “labor is ennobling,” then bestowing honor and benefits upon those who never have cheerfully done a day’s hard work will not exalt the laborer.

Let us get back to the farm and honor the farmer, that our days may be long in the land that the Lord has given us, and let the laborer be truly ennobled.

If farmers “were the founders of civilization,” as Mr. Webster states, then are they also the main pillars supporting the same, and should be looked up to, be honored and rewarded as such. And far above any lawyer, merchant or millionaire, we can trust our workingmen and women. Let us try it at once, one and all of us.

ADDRESS.

BY E. G. GRIGGS, _President of the National Lumbermen’s Manufacturing Association_

It was my pleasure to attend the Second Annual Conservation Congress a year ago in St. Paul. That I am here today representing a lumber producing delegation would intimate that my interest in these proceedings is at least perennial. I deplored the introduction of politics and regretted the delay in publication of the excellent reports submitted with leave to print at the Congress. Just recently I have read the many excellent technical reports, the discussion of which I deemed of more importance to the upbuilding of the conservation movement than the political outbursts that rankle in our breasts and tend to array class against class. Conservation is education, and we all have something to learn. The experience of the older and great states of this Union should profit the younger and perhaps greater.

As a lumberman, conservation to me is not a theory. It is the proper utilization of a great heritage and the elimination of waste in the process of manufacturing and logging. What theory is more vital commercially to the lumberman than that? The establishment of values will determine to what extent conservation will be practiced and reforestation followed. When men devoted to the general welfare of these United States are giving liberally of their time and money and energy to protect the vast resources of this country from wasteful extravagance, I feel it is little enough to expect those who are actively engaged in commercial enterprises to second their efforts.

The importance of sane laws and wise legislation must be apparent to all of us. Unless the business interests of the country heed the call and guide the effort, an outraged public will some day awaken to its lost opportunities.

As an official of the National Lumber Manufacturers’ Association, I feel that we, as lumbermen, are vitally interested in the proceedings of this Congress. I come to you from a state that stands in the front rank as a lumber producer—a citizenship interested from its lowliest to its highest in the proper utilization of its wonderful forest growth. It is true that there is a divergence of opinion among some of our Washington state officials as to state and federal control—but to me, the important issue seems a national one. The value of our timber resources is determined altogether by the demand existing outside our own states. If conservation depends on values, then I say the price you in the Middle West must pay for lumber has a great deal to do with reforestation and utilization of our raw product. It is therefore entirely a national issue, and the question of supply and demand, that inexorable commercial law, concerns us all.

I am a strong believer in the knowledge of conditions and in the benefits of coöperation. The final outcome of the reciprocity pact, conceived, as it was, in secret, emphasizes the fact that our Canadian brethren intend to adopt a conservative policy of their own. As a lumberman, I have never agreed with our honored President in the belief that the trade was a good one for us. To a man not concerned in politics, it seemed that our Canadian traders out-traded the Yankee. Why the argument for a permanent tariff commission, non-partisan and thoroughly competent, should apply on wool, cotton, steel and not on lumber, hardly appeals to me. Now that we know where we stand, is it not high time the tariff issues be studied as in foreign countries, particularly Germany, by a body of experts permanently engaged, that Congress hear and discuss officially its report and that facts be placed before the people? I am democratic enough to still believe in the great American people.

No industry not unduly protected need fear the light or a business upheaval. Today a presidential year causes stagnation in business, either assumed or real. Our country never will settle the tariff issue right until business integrity governs. The revelation in accumulated wealth and control of millions can only be justified if our country prospers. Neither should the people be taxed to accumulate swollen fortunes. The prices at which the same commodities are sold to the people of different nations ought to determine the tariff issue. America is for Americans; let us develop our latent resources, not squander our heritage with prodigality. Golden opportunities or luxurious surroundings do not warrant idleness, but rather a higher sense of individual and national responsibilities. To get the best out of that which we have should concern us all.

Our taxation problems, the methods which have prevailed so long, do not encourage timber holding. Lumbermen have one crop and yearly taxes, while the farmer has yearly taxes and annual crops. A timber investment of $5,000, say at $1.50 per thousand, with taxes and interest compounded, in twenty years will equal $7.50 per thousand, allowing no profit at all, nor considering the fire risk. In President Taft’s address a year ago, he says that “States must legislate to protect their individual holdings from waste and private greed.” Had the Reciprocity Agreement become a law, the Nation would have been responsible for an increased competition and uncalled for development of timber resources in no way beneficial to the United States, except those speculators who have invested in British Columbia timber. The development of Canadian timber holdings will not save our trees as long as growing trees are taxed, capital invested and timber is sold on time contracts. The more competition, the more will be left in the woods, as only in the higher grades will there be profit. Lumber is constantly rising in value because of its increasing inaccessibility and the distance it has to travel to market.

Why deprive our great lumber producing states of the great purchasing power resulting from the manufacture of this resource? Over three-quarters of the cost at the mill of one thousand feet of lumber represents pay roll, and to the Western states this means outside capital. Of the money received for 1,000 feet of 2×4’s delivered on a fifty-cent rate of freight today, the railroad takes $13.00 freight money, leaving $7.00 to pay for logging, manufacturing, selling and stumpage. What your retailers charge I do not know. As manufacturers, we have no trust controlled product and do not control the price to the consumer. Suffice it to say that there is little or no margin in the price of common lumber today to the manufacturer. A comparison of the selling prices at home and abroad, with due regard for grades furnished, should determine the existence of a lumber trust, and the same reasoning applies conversely to steel and other industries. Harassed as the industry has been by government proceedings and investigation of alleged trust and monopoly, we feel that a great injustice is being done that should be righted. If the marketing through retailers is not legal, I predict a commercial upheaval is due in all lines of industry.

Reforestation will come when it is profitable—when the land is more suitable to grow trees on than to sow annual crops or build cities. The methods followed in the East will not apply to the South and West. The character of the timber must be studied to determine how it can be profitably handled. Its proximity to market, and the rail and water haul are to be considered. This was emphasized in the Congress last year and is more apparent today, as the completion of the Panama Canal approaches. It was stated that adequate and economical transportation facilities are viewed among the means of conservation, and realizing that the growth of the country has exceeded its transportation facilities, I trust a comprehensive resolution will be adopted by this Congress regarding the Panama Canal tolls. With our coastwise shipping laws and regulations governing shipments from one American port to another, the benefits of this canal will be seriously menaced unless Congress acts intelligently in the matter, and with due regard to the development of our country. If we are to have tariff revision or free trade, let us at least be consistent and give to our own manufacturers access to ships on a competitive basis.

In my judgment, it will not do to merely resolute and spread high sounding, well-meaning platitudes on the records; we should organize to actively acquaint our citizenship throughout the states with the prevailing conditions and the benefits to be derived through experience of others and knowledge of conditions. Educate the people, and a great public sentiment will demand improved conditions. The efforts of conservationists are often misjudged because considered impractical. I say eliminate the visionary and theoretical, get down to the practical and immediate remedies. We will have a movement so widespread and effective that the Nation will rejoice and problems undreamed of now will be solved by an enlightened, unprejudiced public.

We should encourage men and money in the development of our resources, but by wise supervision control their operations. This government is bigger than any of its component parts, and not only have railroads and corporations felt its guiding hand to their betterment, but the court of final resort must always and forever be the people of this, our native land.

Let us strive for the highest type of citizenship which demands the best that is in us, and we will play our part in the ascendency of the star of the greatest of empires—the American Republic.

INCREASING THE YIELD BY PROPER CULTIVATION OF THE SOIL

BY A. M. TEN EYCK, _Professor of Farm Management Kansas State Agricultural College and Superintendent Fort Hays Branch Experiment Station._

How to increase the acre yield of staple crops is the important problem which the American farmer must solve in order that the world may not go hungry, and also that his own prosperity may continue. The average crop yields in this country are too low. It is possible to double our acre-yields of staple crops by adopting better farming methods.

There are three principal factors which have to do with increasing crop yields: (1) increasing the productive power of the land by fertilizing the soil; (2) planting seed of high-bred and better producing varieties; (3) practicing proper and more thorough cultivation of the soil.

The work in testing varieties and breeding crops at the Kansas Experiment Station has shown that it is possible to increase the average yield of the standard crops in this state twenty-five per cent by the single factor of introducing and planting pure seed of well-bred and high producing varieties. To illustrate,[3] one of the improved varieties of winter wheat grown on the Kansas Agricultural College farm actually produced twelve and one-half bushels more grain per acre each year, or a net profit of nearly $7.00 per acre per annum, as an average for three years, above that produced by common scrub wheat of the same type. Farmers all over the state who have planted this improved wheat have reported similar results, the increase in yield from the well-bred wheat being often much larger than the differences secured at the station. It is hard to believe that one variety of wheat, improved by breeding and selection, will outyield another strain of the same variety, which has not been improved, as much as fifty per cent; but a large number of reports from reliable Kansas farmers indicate that this has occurred, when the two strains of wheat were grown in the same field side by side.

[3] See Kansas Experiment Station Bulletin 144.

Corn is more susceptible to soil and climatic changes than wheat, so that the well-bred seed does not always give the best results from the first year’s planting; but breeding will tell in the corn crop, as shown by experiments at the Kansas Station,[4] in which the high-yielding row, seed has produced from ten to twenty per cent larger yields per acre, and twenty-five to thirty-five per cent more good seed ears than the average corn from which the improved strain was originated.

[4] See Bulletin 147.

The possibilities along this line of increasing the yield of corn by the planting of better seed are shown by the reports which have been received from Kansas farmers, reporting sixty and eighty-bushel yields where the average for the county was twenty or thirty bushels.

The soil of our western states is abundantly fertile; but mismanagement and continuous cropping with corn and wheat have reduced its productive power. It is possible by the proper use of barnyard manure to double the yield of corn and increase the yield of wheat thirty-three per cent, as shown by the results of the experiments at the Station. A single experiment in manuring wheat land previous to planting to alfalfa increased the wheat yield thirty-three per cent, and doubled the crops of alfalfa for the first two years after seeding, making a total increase in the returns per acre of nearly $45.00 for the three years, or $15.00 net increase per annum.[5]

[5] See Kansas Experiment Bulletin 155.

It is possible by a proper rotation of crops, including alfalfa, clover and grasses, to double the productive capacity of thousands of acres of our western corn and wheat lands. This is shown by the experiments at the Kansas Station and by the reports of farmers. In 1906, a careful investigation of the corn yields of Jewell County, Kansas, made by Hon. J. W. Berry, formerly a member of the board of regents of the Kansas State Agricultural College, showed that the average yield from land previously in alfalfa was over eighty bushels per acre, while similar land on the same farm and adjoining farms, which had not been in alfalfa, yielded less than sixty bushels per acre on the average, and the average yield of corn in Jewell County for that year was less than thirty bushels per acre.

It has been shown by the experiments carried on for the last six years at the Station that it is possible to increase the yield of corn ten per cent simply by practicing better methods of preparing the seed-bed. When corn has been planted with the lister, winter or early spring plowing or listing of the ground previous to the planting has given an increase in crop as an average for six years, amounting to six bushels of corn per acre each year, as compared with ground which received no cultivation previous to planting.

Different methods of cultivation of corn, deep or shallow, etc., have not affected the yield so much as different methods of preparing the seed-bed, except where the cultivation of the corn was neglected. The lack of sufficient cultivation means greatly reduced yields or crop failure.

It is possible to increase the wheat yield of Kansas fifty per cent by practicing better methods of seed-bed preparation. As an average for two years’ trials, 1908 and 1909, at the Station the yield of wheat due to preparation of seed-bed alone varied from 21.6 to 37.4 bushels per acre, an increase of seventy-three per cent in yield due to the better preparation of the seed-bed.[6]

[6] See Kansas Experiment Station Circular, 2.

In 1911, one of the driest years which Kansas has ever experienced, this experiment was repeated with remarkable results. The most poorly prepared seed-bed (ground disked, not plowed) yielded a little over four bushels of wheat per acre, while the largest yield was thirty-eight bushels per acre from early deep plowing, which received frequent cultivation after plowing until seeding time. Ordinary loose ground, plowed late, yielded fourteen bushels per acre, while ground cultivated early with the lister plow and leveled with the disk harrow gave thirty-five bushels per acre. The better methods of seed-bed preparation employed in these experiments are such as may be successfully practiced throughout the Western winter wheat belt.

Of the three factors concerned with increasing the acre-yields, the last named, “Practicing Proper and More Thorough Cultivation of the Soil,” is the simplest and most readily applied. Probably more low yields and crop failures are due to insufficient or improper cultivation than to any other single factor over which the farmer has control in the production of any particular crop. With a soil of average fertility, the preparation of the seed-bed by the proper tillage and cultivation methods very largely determines the yield of the crop.

There are four important objects to be accomplished by cultivating the soil: 1. To secure a proper physical condition of the soil favorable to sprouting seed and promoting plant growth. 2. To kill weeds. 3. To conserve soil moisture. 4. To develop or prepare plant food.

The texture of the soil is nearly always more important than mere richness. Many “worn” lands have simply been robbed of their organic matter, often still containing an abundant supply of the mineral elements of plant food. Others have been injured in texture and hence in productiveness by careless or faulty management.

The maintenance and improvement of soil texture are more dependent upon plowing than upon any other operation of tillage. A finely divided, mellow soil is more productive than a hard lumpy one of the same chemical composition, because it affords greater feeding ground and more favorable environment for the plant roots; absorbs and retains more moisture, has better aeration, and less variable extremes of temperature. Also, because it promotes nitrification and the development of available plant food by giving favorable conditions for the development of soil bacteria, and for the decomposition and solution of the soil minerals. In all these ways and others, “mellowness” renders plant food more available and affords a more congenial, comfortable place in which the plants may grow.

Plowing, especially in the spring, tends to ventilate, warm and dry the seed-bed, and if properly done, lessens evaporation from the deeper soil by the development of a soil mulch above it.

Deep plowing brings up new stores of inert plant food, enlarges the moisture reservoir, deepens the seed-bed, gives more root room and more material for the soil bacteria to work over into available plant food. Deep plowing or subsoiling also serves to break up the plant food, to break up the “furrow-sole” or “hard-pan,” thus loosening up compact, impervious, clayey subsoils.

Plowing is an efficient means of destroying weeds and many kinds of injurious insects which prey on farm crops. Hard, clayey or “gumbo” soils are mellowed by late fall or winter plowing, and further, proper and timely plowing is the most efficient and practical means of preparing a suitable seed-bed for nearly all farm crops. Too many farmers who have allowed their land to become deficient in fertility seek to restore its productivity by application of expensive commercial fertilizers, without first putting it in good tilth. This is a great mistake. The way to treat such land is to “plow” it well, and work up a physical condition suitable for the best growth of crops. After all this is done, the application of concentrated commercial fertilizers may give profitable returns.

In order to secure the ideal condition for seed germination and plant growth, a seed-bed for planting small seeds should not be too deep and loose; rather the soil should be mellow, but well pulverized only about as deep as the seed is planted. Below the depth at which the seed is planted it should be firm and well settled, making a good connection with the subsoil, so that the water stored therein may be drawn up into the surface.

The firm soil below the seed, well connected with the subsoil, supplies the moisture to the seed, while the mellow soil above it allows sufficient circulation of air to supply oxygen and favors warming by gathering the heat of the sunshine during the day and acting as a blanket to conserve the soil heat, maintaining a more uniform temperature during the night.

The mellow soil above the seed conserves the moisture, acting as a mulch to keep the water from reaching the surface, where it would be rapidly lost by evaporation. The same condition favors the upward growth of the young shoots into the air and sunshine.

The loose, deep seed-bed is almost wholly dependent upon rains for sufficient moisture to germinate the seed and start the young plant. If the crop starts, it is very apt to be injured by short periods of dry weather, because of the rapid drying out of the loose surface soil. In such a seed-bed the crop is more apt to “burn out” in the summer, or “freeze out” in winter, than a crop grown in the “ideal” seed-bed described above.

It should not be inferred from this description of the “ideal” seed-bed that the soil should not be plowed deeply; rather, deep plowing should be encouraged, but timely, so that the soil may settle and fill with moisture, and such cultivation should be given after plowing, so as to secure a favorable physical condition of the seed-bed.

So far as cultivation is concerned there are three principal steps in the conservation of soil moisture:

1. The soil must be loosened to a considerable depth in order to prepare a reservoir to receive the rain and carry the water downward. This may be accomplished by deep plowing, by listing, or by disking unplowed lands.

2. The water which is carried down into the subsoil must be brought back again into the surface where the seed is germinating and the young roots are growing, and to accomplish this a good connection must be made between the furrow-slice and the subsoil, and this is the purpose in the use of the subsurface packer immediately after plowing.

3. Finally, in order that the water which is drawn up again towards the surface may not reach the air and be wasted by evaporation, the upper two or three inches of the soil must be kept mellow in the form of a soil mulch, and this is accomplished in the growing of crops, by frequent cultivation, which is not so practicable with wheat, and other small grains, as with corn and other intertilled crops.