i
Agricultural Experimentation
In Box Butte County
c
PROF. E. W.
CONSERVATION
OF FERTILITY
Address of Prof. E. W. Hunt at Ne
braska State Fair, Sept. 8,1909:
I wish to call your attention to what
seems to me to bo tlio gravest economic
problem now before the people of this
state. Wo are confronted by other prob
lems grave enough. Our social, our com
mercial, bur industrial life each presents
problems which tax tb the limit the capac
ity of our keenest) deepest, most capable
thinkers. The public press, tho magazines
teem with discussions of them; learned
proflesors study them and lecture about
them, and the public mind is kept in a
continual ferment over the right solution
of them. Tariff revision up or down, cor
poration tax, income tax, railroad and
passenger rates, the control by the state of
corporations created by the law of the
state, have tho women a right to the bal
lot, and if they have, is it best for them to
exercise that right. These are some of
the problems now engaging tho public
mind. I present to you today a problem
greater and graver than them all. Theso
problems affect only tho mode of our life.
The problem I bring to vou affects tho life
Itself. Unless the problem that I present
to you is successfully solved, the time will
come when we shall have no need to dis
cuss these other problems, for we shall
bave ceased to be.
Agriculture is the basis of all our life.
It furnishes all our other industries, it
supplies all our other activities. Let ag
riculture cease and in a short time every
wheel of industry would cease to turn,
every business house would closo, and the
whole social fabric would crumble and
fall, Agriculture feeds and clothes tho
worfd, and without it the world would go
naked and starve. The prosperity of the
world depends upon the prosperity of ag
riculture. The prosperity of agriculture
depends upon maintaining the fertility of
the soil, upon preserving undiminished
the capacity of the earth to yield its in
crease. The problem of maintaining the
fertility of tho soil thus becomes the mas
ter problem of them all, affecting not a
lone the future weal or woe, but the very
life itself, of the state.
God made Nebraska marvellously pro
ductive, He gave her advantages of soil
and climate such as few other states have
possessed. It used to be said that if you
would tickle her soil with a hoe it' would
laugh with a harvest. The prodigality of
nature was everywhere apparent. All
that was needed to make it a perpetual
well-spring of the necessities and luxuries
of life was a careful husbanding of its
imperial resources. Out we have abused
our privileges. The prodigality of nature
has been more than matched by our prod
igality of. waste. We have assumed in di
rect opposition to the experience of all
times and of all peoples, that the fertility
of our soil was inexhaustible. The Amer
icans have become (he greatest soil robbers
on the face of the earth except the Rus
sians. Japan with a volcanic island inhos
pitable to agriculture maintains a popula
tion many times denser than ours, and yet
her refractory soil is becoming year by
year more productive. China has kept
intact the fertility of her marvellous val
leys since before the dawn of history.
The soil of Germany is richer and more
productive than it was a thousand years
ago. In America the observer of econo
mic life has a far different story to tell.
In New England, the gradual impoverish
ment of the soil has driven the greater
part of the rural population into indus
trial life, and the farm houses are being
turned into sweat shops for the urban
manufacturers. Abandoned farms may
there be bought for less than one half of
the cc t of the improvements on them.
The middle states are passing through a
similar experience. Ohio, Indiana, Illi
nois, have felt the drain upon their soils.
The line of soil exhaustion has been
marching steadily west for a hundred
years. It has reached us and its menac
ing shadow stretches across our state.
This is no time for buncome. We must
look the facts squarely in the face. It is
not long since a high Jdignitary of the na
tion asserted that our soil was not in pro
cess of being exhausted, and attempted to
prove his statement by wrenching statis
tics out of their proper relation, and there
was in our own state a chattering echo
that the myth of soil exhaustion was at
last exploded.
It will take only a moment and a little
cerebral activity to settle that matter.
Plants in order to grow have to build new
plant tissues. In order to build new
plant tissues they must have material out
of which to build them. You can not
make something out of nothing; neither
can plants. Chemistry shows us that this
material out of which plants build their
new tissues comes, part of it from the air
and the rest from the soil. If what is
taken from the soil is not returned to it
there will be less remaining in the soil
than there was in the beginning. If this
HUNT, Director
:i
process is continued long enough this ma
terial will becomo exhausted. In the old
er settled portions of this state this drain
upon the resources of tho soil is already
painfully evident.
This material for plant tissue, this plant
food, is not the soil itself, but Is contained
In tho soil, just as the 87 per cent of water
in milk contains tho 13 per cent of nutri
ent matter. The average crop takes from
this plant food in tho soil from every aero
from so to 70 pounds of nitroeen. about 20
pounds of phosphoric acid, and from 30 to
50 pounds of potash. This has
been going on in the older settled parts of
ttio state for nearly 50 years, and in newer
parts a correspondingly less time. Very
little attempt has been made to return any
of this material to the soil from which it
camo. Will any intelligent person claim
that there is as much plant food in the soil
after 50 years of soil robbery as there was
in the beginnine? No. and we have no
argument with any other. Our soil is
wearing out. Tho fact is evident. Even
"the wayfaring man. though a fool, need
not err" in this matter. We can no
longer raise the crops wo used to raise.
We aro face to face with an approaching
crisis. This process of soil robbery must
be arrested at any cost, for it threatens
the source of all our prosperity,
And it can bo arrested. There is no
need that it should continue. I believe
that this marvelous soil of ours mn h
continuously cropped and its productivity
and its fertility bo increased at the same
time, Let mo explain to you briefly how
it may be dono. By a wonderful econ
omy of nature, animals make comparative
ly little use of plant food. The part of the
plant that an animal uses is for the most
part the part that the1 plant took, not from
the soil, but from tho air. If, then, the
crop be fed in its entirety to animals they
will return in their excretions what they
cannot use. In these excretions will bo
found the major part of what the crop
took trom tho soil. If these aro carefully
preserved and returned to the soil, there
will be returned 95 per cent of what the
crop took from tho soil. Tho othor 5 per
cent and much more may be gained by
tho use of legumes in rotation. In this
way the fertility of the soil may not only
bo kept intact, but may be actually in
creased. The question naturally arises, "If the
farmer feeds all he raises.to live-stock, and
markets nothing but live-stock, where will
the world gets its cereals for foods?" Be
fore I attempt to answer this objection let
me cite a few facts. Whenever a farmer
hauls a load of grain to an elevator he
hauls the best part of his farm there. In
every load of grain thero is a certain de
nude amount of plant food, so many
pounds of nitrogen, so much phosphoric
acid, so much potasln These plant foods
have a definite market value. If you take
an average of the prices paid for grain
during the last ten years, and the average
price, at which these plant foods have been
sold during tho same time, and compare
them you will be astonished by the facts
shown. The truth is that during this
time the average farmer has sold his aver
age crop for less than tho plant food that
is in the crop would cost him if he bought
it in tho general market. If you regard
the fertility that is in tho soil as a part of
the farmer's assets, and that is the way in
which it should be regarded, he has sold
his grain during this time at an actual
loss. Is it fair to ask him to continue to
market his crop at a loss? Sometime I
hope some inventive genius will invent a
process by which plant food may be sep
arated from animal food on the farm, so
that the fertility that is in the crop may
be kept at home and returned to tho soil.
Until that times comes, my advice is to
market less grain, until the scareltw nf
supply raises the price to a point where it
win pay lor the fertility contained in the
grain, and the interest on the capital in
vested, and for labor, and for depreciation,
and still leave a marcin of Drofit for th
farmer. This is the true economic law nf
agriculture, and the sooner the farmer
takes advantage of it, the better for the
soil, the better for the future. Then the
farmer can afford every time he markets a
load of grain to take back to the farm and
return to the soil the equivalent of the
plant food that he sells. The British As
sociation tor the Advancement of Scienr
at a meeting which closed last week at
Winnipeg uttered a solemn warning that
the governments of the United States and
Canada must adopt a law forcing farmers
to put back into the soil a Dercentai nf
chemicals extracted annually, or future
generations will not have bread to eat. At
least so the newspapers report. Unless
the farmers of the state adopt the sugges
tion I have made, the time will come when
the alternative advocated by the British
association will be forced upon them.
Estimate if you can the enormous waste
of plant food that is going on continually
under our present system. Most of this
waste can never be regained. Some of
the corn that the farmer sells goes to the
feed yards big and little scattered all over
the state. It would not be so bad if this
plant food though lost to the farm from
which it came were saved for some other
farm. But this happens to only a small
percentage of it. Most of it is washed to
the streams and is lost forever. If this
seems unpardonable waste, what shall we
say of the almost incomputable amount of
cereals that daily go to supply the needs
of our cities and towns. Think of the
flood of agricultural wealth that is daily
pouring from the sewers cf our great cities
into the Insatiate maw of the ocean. Such
waste is an economic crime. Must we be
reduced to agricultural poverty before we
begin to arrest it? In the city whero I
have been spending the summer they are
putting in a system of sewers, with a pur
ification plant, and the fertility from the
sewage will be returned to the soil. Let
other cities of Nebraska take lessons from
this enterprising child of tho elevated
plateau.
But I am talking to the farmers of Ne
braska, and I ask you to arrest this pro
cess of waste on your own farms. A little
less than a year ago a farmer said to me,
''You can have all the manure made in
this county and the farmers of the county
will help you to load it to take it away."
You think this man short-sighted, but how
many of our farmers the state over show
any better foresight? In one of the wheat
growing counties of the state. I was told
that 95 per cent of the straw piles in the
county are annually burned. Loss than a
month ago I was told in another wheat
growing county that fully 75; per cent of
the straw piles aro burned every year. If
we are to give the soil fair treatment, the
material in this straw that came from the
soil should be returned to tho soil. It is
an economic crime to burn it. I want to
live to see tho time when it will be a pen
itentiary offense to burn a straw pile in
the state of Nebraska. All of the waste
roughage on every farm should be return
ed to the soil. It should first be thorough
ly decomposed, becauso the plant food
that it contains does not becamo available
for plants until decomposition has passed
to its last stages. Unless it is thoroughly
decomposed before being applied to the
soil it will work detriment in two ways:
first, itg decomposition in the soil will rob
the soil of moisture needed by tho plants,
and secondly, it will check the flow of
capilary water on which tho plants depend.
The best place for preparing roughage for
the soil is the barn lot, the corral. Bring
it thero, and let the cattle tramp it. It
will absorb and preserve their excrements.
Grade about the corral s6 that no water
will rush across it, and put eve troughs on
the roofs to convey the roof water away.
Then all the water it gets it will get from
the skies, and in this state it will generally
hold all of that without leaching. Too
many corrals are located on a knoll or hill,
as if the aim of the farmer were to wash
out of it into the streams all the fertility
possible, and be rid of it forever. No
farmer would think for a minute of piling
up his sugar or salt in such a way, exposed
to the wash of the rain, and yet the fer
tility in the corral has of course not as
great, but as definite a money value on
every farm as either salt or sugar.
Most Nebraska farmers are afraid of
the manure heap. They say that it will
burn or otherwise injure the land. Of
cou.se it will if it is not thoroughly de
composed and rightly applied. But no
well rotted manure applied a little at a
time and often and thoroughly incorporat
ed with the soil has ever yet injured any
land. It has always benefitted it, and
will always benefit ii. I tell you that your
greatest preventive of soil impoverishment
and your surest protection against drought
lies in the despised, neglected manure
heap. It will not only add fertility to your
soil, but it will materially increase its
water holding capacity. Don't move your
stables or your corrals to get away from
it, don't haul it to buffalo wallows or
sloughs to be rid of it. The time for doing
that has long since passed, if it ever was.
Give It to your soil which hungers for it
Give back to it what you have taken away,
and it will generously repay you.
Another source of serious waste in soil
resources is found in negligent and im
proper methods in cultivation. The plant
foodlhat is in the soil is as soluble as
either salt or sugar. If it were not so
plants could not use it, as they take their
food in solution. Every time that water
runs on your farm it carries fertility with
it. It gullies out and carries away great
bodies of the soil itself. Stop this wasting
wash, Use your own ingenuity in devis
ing means to prevent it. On one farm
they fill the cuts with brush to catch and
hold the escaping soil. On another they
are planting willows for the same purpose.
On all farms they should plow deeper so
as to catch and hold more of the rainfall.'
Two inches of loosened soil will hold a
certain amount of water without leaking;
six inches will hold three time as much;
ten inches will hold three times as much.
Stop the wash. It is a serious menace.
It works incalculable damage. It has
stripped and denuded thousands of acres
of as fertile soil as the sun ever shown up
on. Our larger streams are constantly
eating away our most fertile valleys.
Along the Missouri Nebraska is trading
farms with Iowa and Missouri every year.
The same forces are at work on all our
streams. How to prevent this loss
constitutes a grave problem for the state,
but the first step in the solution, of the
problem is to arrest and hold the water on
the farm, and prevent such excessive feed
ing of the streams, Nebraska sometimes
goes to sleep on her somnolent prairies.
But she can also get terribly awake. Let
her awake to this robbing of her soil and
prevent it, and let every tiller of 'the soil
do his share.
Did you ever think what will be the re
sult if this process of soil depletion is per
mitted indefinitely to continue? Every
year the land will become gradually poorer.
Each succeeding generation will wring a
scantier livelihood from a slowly dying
soil. Tho time will at last come when it
will no longer suffice for their needs. This
is no melodramatic dream. Every econo
mist, every serious thinker knows that
this result is certain to follow a continua
tion of our present agricultural methods.
A radical change in method must be
brought about. Scientific agriculture is in
Its infancy. The coming true science of
agriculture will concern itself less with
leaching us how to grow the biggest crops,
in other words showing us how to rob the
soil more rapidly and systematically, and
will devote itself more to maintaining In-
Ltact, or better still, to replenishing the de
creasing fertility of our incomparable soil.
To this end every lover of the soil should
lend his earnest co-operation.
This is more than a matter of expedien
cy. It is a question of right, of ethics, of
patriotism. No man can own more than
a life use of the land he calls his own. It
is entailed to succeeding generations.
Those who are to come after us have a
certain indefeasible right to tho wealth
that is in the soil. The owner receives it
in trust for.the great unborn future. It
is his supremo duty to transmit that trust
unimpaired to his successors. The ulti
mate prosperity of tho state depends on
his doing this. A recent sociological
writer has said that the supreme duty of
life is so to live that each generation may
be better than its immediate predecessor,
better equipped, with better facilities.
That supreme duty is yours. See that
you exemplify this law in your treatment
of the soil.
I sometimes wish that I might come
back here after a hundred years to see
how Nebraska, with what will then be her
teeming population, will be progressing.
I should like to contribute, if possible, to
her future glory. I should like to help
make her children of that future day
prosperous and happy. It is in that hope
that I have spoken as I have.
i 1 4. ! ! ! . ..;.
"University of the Stomach."
"Wo need a university of the
stomach," said a well known
St. Louis physician recently,
"with a full set of professors of
nutrition, digestion, assimilation
and waste, us well a3 of general
physiology, anatomy and gen
eral biology, or, better yet, each
college and every common school
in tho land should teach how
to take care of tho body and
how to save the stomach, par
ticularly In tho summer months,
when carelessness in diet and
living renders a person especial
ly liable to disease."
t
4 ! 1 . ! .. t ,i.j, , ,, , .. , .. , ., , .3. , ,,
BRENNAN'S
SANITARY
FOUNTAIN
It couldn't be better
IT'S BEST
Conrad Koch
Jewelry
and Watch Repairing
Special attention given to
RAILROAD WORK
BRENNAN'S
DRUG STORE
Cement Walks
I make a specialty of ce
ment walks and work. Have
been constructing- same in Al
liance more than one year,
and invite the most rigid in
spection of my work. Use
only the best of materials and
make prices as low as can be
done with honest work. Have
had many years experience in
cement construction in vari
ous cities. Remember poor
cement work is dear at the
cheapest price and when you
have had to replace it is mon
ey thrown away.
John Pederson
LLOYD O. THOMAS
Notary Public
Public Stenographer in Office
405 Box Butte Ave.
P. J. CLATTERBUCK
Farms and Ranches
1IOX llt'TTK ,VN1 DAWES COUNTIES
For GOOD INVESTMENTS WRITE ME
.MAKSLANI), NEIIH.
I
Dr. Cook and His
Itowllls New Theory For Penetrating
Frozen North Won Him Immor
tai Fame - Millionaire
Bradley liis Backer.
By FREDERICK R. TOOMDS.
WHEN the thrilling news was
flashed underneath the
oceans and across the conti
nents of the world that Dr.
Frederick A. Cook of Brooklyn liuH
discovered the north pole It was notltl
catlon of tho greatest selentille
achievement of modern times. For
decade after decade daring explorers,
self sacrificing scientists and steely
nerved ndvetiturers of a dozen na
tions have hurled themselves ngalnst
tho merciless lee barriers of the frozen
north In attempts to discover the pole.
Decade after decade the same result
failure lias been the only reward for
the hardy voyagers who have mnde
the exploits of the famed "hardy
Norsemen" of old dwindle Into Insig
nificance. It Is in words of death, of
nwww 1
' i 3 " &k Jo ' J jS 4 vr
DR. FREDERICK ALBERT COOK OP BROOKLYN. WHO DISCOV
ERED NORTH POLE.
seas. The Ice hardened as he got to
within fifty miles of tho pole. Tho all
prevailing silence and sameuess were
telling heavily on the tempers of the
men. The Eskimos quarreled and
threatened to knife one another. The
pall of the bidden pole, jealous of the
discovery of Its long retreat, was work
ing on the brains of its pursuers.
At this time but two Eskimos accom
panied htm.
On April 21 observations showed Dr.
Cook that he was within a few hun
dred feet of the pole. A few seconds
more nnd he stood upon It. the goal of
scores of tho world's bravest men,
nnd. planting the American flag, he
claimed for the United States over
30,000 square miles of territory a
30,000 mile section of nature's scrap
heap.
News Came From Copenhagen.
The first news of Dr. Cook's discov
ery to reach America camp from tho
colonial ofllce at Copenhagen, stating
that with a few Eskimos, a sledging
party, Dr. Cook reached the pole on
April 21. 1908.
The Copenhagen authorities had ob
tained tholr information in a dispatch
from Lerwick. Scotland, which also re
lated that Dr. Cook was returning from
the polar seas on the steamship Hans
Egede. bound for Denmark.
Dr. Cook, who was surgeon of the
first Peary arctic expedition and who
Is a mountnin climber of wide expe
rience, disembarked from the auxil
iary schooner ytvet 7oln P.. Bradley
on Aug. 27 with his bupplles at Etah,
on Smith's sound, latitude TO degrees
north nnd about 750 miles from the
pole. Smith's sound Is at the north
ern extremity of Ratlin bay. His Idea
was to winter somewhere In this gen
eral section and early In the spring
cross Ellesniere Land and push onward
and northward to the polo across the
desolate polar rea, when-e few men
ever returned to tell the tale.
Provisions, clothing and ammunition
sufficient for two years were taken
nshore from the Bradley. The adven
turer's party consisted of one other
white man and about a dozen Eskl-
mos. Mrs. Cook, tho, explorer's wife,i
accompanied him as far as Etah. I
A Secret Expedition.
The Cook expedition was largely a
necret one. Mr Bradley, having a
burning desire to have Dr. Cook out
strip Peary to the pole. Insisted that
no chance should be taken of letting
Peary get wind of the venture. In
his opinion. Peary, who was already
within striking distance of Etah,
would hasten his own operations If he
heard of Cook's plana aud probably
secure all the available dogs at Etah,
so that Cook would bt unable to start
over the Ice on his sledges. "For
those reasons," says Mr. Bradley, "we
Trip to the Pole f
Secrecy Surrounded Expedition So
as to Thwart His Rival. Peary.
He Has Been a Lifelong
Adventurer.
bad succumbed to the strangling grip
of the abysmal horrors of the region'.
And It was In April that the orbit of
the midnight sun carrieJ Its brilliant
occupant over the horizon. The glitter
on the green-while pack Ice and the
puiple tinged bergs was a stimulant to
the nerve worn Invaders of the grim
silence. The dogs began to sicken.
Those that dropped dead in the stiff-
ened harness were eagerly devoured
by their mates. Thus the team of
huskies becamo self supporting.
A tempernture of more than 45 de
grees below zero prevailed In spite of
the rays of tho midnight sun. Tho
day came when but 100 miles of lco
pack Iny between Dr. Cook and the
north pole on. on, around, up, down,
back and again on. circumventing tho
shifting barriers, outwitting the frozen
starvation, of freezing torture and
blighted hopes that the story of tho
search for the pole has been written.
And It remained for Dr. Cook In
tho year 1003 to achieve what had
become to be considered tho impossi
ble, to accomplish what so many
dauntless men had attempted, to win
Immortal fame by actually penetrat
ing to the north pole.
And also he played a sensational
part in a battle of giants In ns pretty
n story of Intense rlvnlry between
strong men as has ever been imagined
by tho most romantic flctlonlsts. In
short. Dr. Cook fulfilled the dearest
wish of his financial backer. John R.
Brndley, n wealthy New Yorker, who
had registered a grim determination
that Commander Robert E. Peary
should not be the first man to reach
the pole. Bradley, a millionaire who
has hunted and climbed mountain
peaks with Dr. Cook, was confident
that Peary could be beaten to the pole.
Who was the man to do it? That was
the question. Cook? The very man.
thought Bradley the very man to bak
with a million dollars in cash for such
a venture.
And Cook made good.
An Account of the Trip.
During the early part of Dr. Cook's
trip into the unknown, whero the one
wrtalnty was the shadow of death's
grfm specter, he met with Immense
herds of big game musk oxen, bears,
etc. Ills eleven Eskimos nud 103 dogs
were in prime condition as In Febru
ary, 1903. from Helberg Island they be
gan a tortuous trek over tho mysteri
ous polar sea.
Averaglug from ten to tlftecn mllea
a day of progress, week after week
passed. Strictest economy In the. use
f provisions was practiced, of course.
He discovered a large urea of hither
to unknown land, seemingly many
thousands of square miles In area, and
reached tho northernmost limit of
rocky formation. From that point there
stretched before him the gray expanse
of the northern polar ocean, dulling to
the eye. stupendous to the Imagination,
but treacherous ns the qulverlug quick
sands that softly and surely smother
and kill.
Overpowering winds often drove the
venturers into caverns or temporary
ice huts. The cold was the coldest
ever experienced by a white man ,who
afterward lived, in April Dr. Cook
was lu latitude Ki degrees 31 minutes,
longitude 80 degrees 21 minutes. No
more laud was to be seen. The lco
pack was inoviug with the currents
and threatened to sweep him far to
the eastward. Change of direction,
therefore, was frequently necessary.
On. on. on Into the ghastly north
pk'dded man and beast. No more seals
njr '.K'ars nor even the minute urea
lu; os of tile sea wore seen. Even they
l ut f, U"0 f r rmr.
tWHWWl
fca
