recognize that the land cannot hold up under the systems of farming
that are being practiced, and these systems are essentially the same
as have been followed in America since 1607. What the Southern
farmer did with slave labor, the Western farmer is now doing with
the gang plow, the two-row cultivator, and the four-horse disks and
harrows. In addition he tile-drains his land which helps to insure
larger crops and more rapid soil depletion. He even uses clover as a
soil stimulant, and spreads the farm fertilizer as thinly as
possible with a machine made for the purpose in order to secure both
its plant food value and its stimulating effect. Positive soil
enrichment is practically unknown in the great corn belt.

"Robbery is a harsh word; and yet the farmers and landowners of
America are and always have been soil robbers; and they not only rob
the nation of the possibility of permanent prosperity, but they even
rob themselves of the very comforts of life in their old age and
their children and grandchildren of a rightful inheritance.

"Worse than all this, or at least more lamentable, is the fact that
it need not be. The soils of Virginia need not have become worn out
and abandoned; because the earth and the air are filled with the
elements of plant food that are essential to the restoration and
permanent maintenance of the high productive capacity of these
soils. Moreover there is more profit and greater prosperity for the
present landowner in a possible practicable system of positive soil
improvement than under any system which leads to ultimate depletion
and abandonment of the land.

"The profit in farming lies first of all in securing large crop
yields. It costs forty bushels of corn per acre in Illinois to raise