Even in the state of Massachusetts, where a most active campaign has
been waged for forty years by the mixed commercial fertilizer
interests, urging and persuading many farmers to use their
high-priced artificial soil stimulants, very large areas of land are
being agriculturally abandoned. Thus the following statement appears
in the report of the United States Bureau of Census in regard to the
farm land of Massachusetts:

"The area of improved land decreased without interruption until in
1910 it was only about one-half what it was in 1880."

It should not be forgotten, however, that market gardeners often
sell from $100 to $300 worth of produce from an acre and they can
well afford to use large amounts of soluble commercial plant food
(acid phosphate, nitrates, etc.) as well as animal manures from the
cities.

Is the Soil Inexhaustible?

It is not the fault of the farmer alone that soil-robbing and land
ruin have followed his work in America. Neither the average farmer
of today nor any of his ancestors received any agricultural
instruction in the schools; and the greedy fertilizer agent has
persuaded him to buy his patent soil medicine and has taken $100 of
the farmer's money and given him in return only $10 worth of what he
really needs to buy; and even the Bureau of Soils of the Federal
Government has for several years promulgated the erroneous and
condemnable theory expressed in the following quotations:

"From the modern conception of the nature and purpose of the soil it