crop values from four different fields not receiving potassium were
$148.75, $151.30, $229.37 and $221.30; while four other adjoining
fields, which differed only by liberal applications of potassium,
produced during the same ten years $149.43, $149.96, $229.20 and
$225.57, respectively.

Thus, as a general average, phosphorus increased the crop values by
$76.50 an acre, which amounts to more than 300 per cent on the
investment, and at the end of the ten years the soil on the best
treated and highest yielding land was 10 per cent richer in
phosphorus than at the beginning; while the crops from the
unfertilized land removed an amount of phosphorus equal to nearly
one-tenth of the total supply in the plowed soil. But a similar
general average shows that potassium produced increased crop values
worth only 86 cents, or 3 per cent of its cost.

What other results should be expected from land containing in the
plowed soil of an acre less than 1200 pounds of phosphorus and more
than 36,000 pounds of potassium?

"Working" the Land

If there is one agricultural fact that needs to be impressed upon
the American people it is that the farmers of this country have been
living, not upon the interest from their investments, but upon their
principal; and whatever measure of apparent prosperity they have had
has been taken from their capital stock. The boastful statement
sometimes made, that the American landowner has become a scientific
farmer, is as erroneous as it is optimistic. Such statements are
based upon a few selected examples or rare illustrations, and not