CHAPTER XV
COEDUCATION
PERCY took a lesson in turning the cream separator and after dinner Mrs. Thornton assured him that she and her sister were greatly disappointed that they had not been permitted to hear the discussion concerning the use of science on the farm.
"We have never forsaken our belief that these old farms can again be made to yield bountiful crops," she said, "as ours did for so many years under the management of our ancestors. 'Hope springs eternal in the human breast.' I stop with that for I do not like the rest of the couplet. We can see that some marked progress has been made under my husband's management, although he feels that it is very slow work building up a run-down farm. But he has raised some fine crops on the fields under cultivation,—as much as ten barrels of corn to the acre, have you not, Dear?" she asked.
"Yes, fully that much, but even ten barrels per acre on one small field is nothing compared to the great fields of corn Mr. Johnston raises in the West. and it makes a mighty small show here on a nine-hundred-acre farm, most of which hasn't been cropped for more than twenty years; and even then it was given up because the negro tenants couldn't raise corn enough to live on.
"I've talked some with the fertilizer agents, but they don't know much about fertilizers, except what they read in the testimonials published in the advertising booklets. I have had some good help from the agricultural papers, but most that is written for the papers doesn't apply to our farm, and it's so indefinite and incomplete, that I've just spent this whole evening asking Mr. Johnston questions; and I haven't given him a chance to answer them all yet."
"I am sure you have not asked more questions this afternoon than I did this forenoon," Percy remarked; "and all your answers were based on authentic history or actual experience, while my answers were only what I have learned from others."
"Well, if we were more ready to learn from others, it would be better for all of us," said Mr. Thornton. "Experience is a mighty dear teacher and, even if we finally learn the lesson, it may be too everlasting late for us to apply it. Now we all want to learn about that process called nitrification."
"It is an extremely interesting and important process," said Percy. "It includes the stages or steps by which the insoluble organic nitrogen of the soil is converted into soluble nitrate nitrogen, in which form it become available as food for all of our agricultural plants."
"Excepting the legumes?" asked Mr. Thornton.
"Excepting none," Percy replied. "The legume plants, like clover, take nitrogen from the soil so far as they can secure it in available form, and in this respect clover is not different from corn. The respect in which it is different is the power of clover to secure additional supplies of nitrogen from the air when the soil's available supply becomes inadequate to meet the needs of the growing clover. If the conditions are suitable for nitrogen-fixation, then the growth of the legume plants need not be limited by lack of nitrogen; whereas, nitrogen is probably the element that first limits the growth and yield of all other crops on your common soils."
"Now, what do you think of that, Girls? With millions of dollars' worth of nitrogen in the air over every acre, our crops are poor just because we don't use it. I wish you would tell me something about the suitable conditions for nitrogen-fixation, Mr. Johnston. You understand, Girls, that nitrogen-fixation is simply getting nitrogen from the inexhaustible supply in the air by means of little microscopic organisms called bacteria, which live in little balls called tubercles attached to the roots of certain plants called legumes, like cowpeas and clover. Corn and wheat and such crops can't get this nitrogen. Now, Mr. Johnston is telling about nitrification, a process which is entirely different from nitrogen-fixation. Excuse me, Mr. Johnston, but I wanted to make this plain to Mrs. Thornton and Miss Russell."
"I am glad you did so," Percy replied. "As I was saying, nitrification has no connection whatever with the free nitrogen of the air.
"All plants take their food in solution; that is, the plant food taken from the soil must be dissolved in the soil water or moisture. Of the essential elements of plant food, seven are taken from the soil through the roots into the plant. These seven do not include those of which water itself is composed. Now, these seven plant food elements exist in the soil almost exclusively in an insoluble form. In that condition they are not available to the plant for plant food; and it is the business of the farmer to make this plant food available as fast as is needed by his growing crops.
"The nitrogen of the soil exists in the organic matter; that is, in such materials as plant roots, weeds, and stubble, that may have been plowed under, or any kind of vegetable maker incorporated with the soil, including all sorts of crop residues, green manures, and the common farm fertilizers from the stables. When these organic materials are decomposed and disintegrated to such an extent that their structure is completely destroyed, the resulting mass of partially decayed black organic matter is called humus. The nitrogen of the soil is one of the constituents of this humus or other organic matter. It is not contained in the mineral particles of the soil. On the other hand the other six elements of plant food are contained largely in the mineral part of the soil, as the clay, silt, and sand. thus the iron, calcium, magnesium, and potassium, all of which are called abundant elements, are contained in the mineral matter, and usually in considerable amounts, while they are found in the organic matter in very small proportion. The phosphorus and sulfur are found in very limited quantities in most soils, but they are present in both organic and mineral form.
"Practically the entire stock or store of all of the elements in the soil is insoluble and consequently unavailable for the use of growing plants; and, as I said, some of the chief plans and efforts of the farmer should be directed to the business of making plant food available.
"The nitrogen contained in the insoluble organic matter of the soil is made soluble and available by the process called nitrification. Three different kinds of bacteria are required to bring about the complete change."
"Are these bacteria different from the nitrogen fixing bacteria?" asked Mr. Thornton.
"Entirely different," Percy replied, "and there are three distinct kinds, one for each of the three steps in the process.
"The first may be called ammonia bacteria. They have power to convert organic nitrogen into ammonia nitrogen; that is, into the compound of nitrogen and hydrogen; and this step in the process is called ammonification.
"The other two kinds are the true nitrifying bacteria. One of them converts the ammonia into nitrites, and the other changes the nitrites into nitrates. These two kinds are known as the nitrite bacteria and the nitrate bacteria.
"Technically the last two steps in the process are nitrification proper; but, speaking generally, the term nitrification is used to include the three steps, or both ammonification and nitrification proper.
"Now, the nitrifying bacteria require certain conditions, otherwise they will not perform their functions. Among these essential conditions are the presence of moisture and free oxygen, a supply of carbonates, certain food materials for the bacteria themselves, and a temperature within certain limits.
"You may remember, Mr. Thornton, that more soil nitrogen is made available for cowpeas during the summer weather than for clover during the cooler fall and spring?"
"Yes, I remember that distinction."
"I declare," said Miss Russell, "Tom talks as though he had been there and seen the things going on. I haven't seen you using any microscope."
"Well, I tell you, I've mighty near seen 'em," was the reply. "Mr. Johnston makes everything so plain that I can mighty near see what he saw when he looked through the microscope."
"I greatly enjoyed my microscopic work," said Percy, "and still more the work in the chemical laboratory where we finally learned to analyze soils, to take them apart and see what they contain,—how much nitrogen how much phosphorus, how much limestone, or how much soil acidity, which means that limestone is needed. Then I also enjoyed the work in the pot-culture laboratory, where we learned not to analyze but to synthesize; that is, to put different materials together to make a soil. Thus, we would make one soil and put in all of the essential plant food elements except nitrogen, and another with only phosphorus lacking, and still another with both nitrogen and phosphorus present, and all of the other essential elements provided, except potassium, or magnesium, or iron. These prepared soils were put in glass jars having a hole in the bottom for drainage, and then the same kind of seeds were planted in each jar or pot. Some students planted corn, others oats or wheat or any kind of farm seeds. I grew rape plants in one series of pots, and I have a photograph with me which shows very well that all of the plant food elements are essential.
"You see one pot contained no plant food and one was prepared with all of the ten essential elements provided. Then the other pots contained all but one of the necessary soil elements, as indicated in the photograph."
"Why, I never saw anything like that," said Mrs. Thornton.
"But I have many a time," said her husband, "right here on this old farm; I don't know what's lacking, of course, but some years I've thought most everything was lacking. But, according to this pot-culture test, you can't raise any crops if just one of these ten elements is lacking, no matter how much you have of the other nine; and it seems to make no difference which one is lacking, you don't get any crop. Is that the fact, Mr. Johnston?"
One pot with no plant food, and one with all the essential elements provided, and still others with but one element lacking. All planted the same day and cared for alike.
"Yes, Sir," Percy replied. "Where all of the elements are provided, a fine crop is produced, but in each case where a single element is omitted that is the only difference, and in some cases the result is worse than where no plant food is supplied. It seems to hurt the plant worse to throw its food supply completely out of balance than to leave it with nothing except what it draws from the meager store in the seed planted. Of course all the pots were planted with the same kind of seed at the same time, and they were all watered uniformly every day."
"Those results are very striking, indeed," said Miss Russell," but I suppose one would never see such marked differences under farm conditions?"
"Only under unusual or abnormal conditions," Percy replied, "but the fact is that as a very general rule our crop yields are limited chiefly because the supply of available plant food is limited. Sometimes the clover crop is a complete failure on untreated land, while it lives and produces a good crop if the soil is properly treated; and in such cases the difference developed in the field is just as marked as in the pot-cultures. In general we may set it down as an absolute fact that the productive power of normal land depends primarily upon the ability of the soil to feed the crop.
"I have here a photograph of a corn field on very abnormal soil. They had the negative at the Experiment Station and I secured a print from it, in part because I became interested in a story connected with this experiment field, which our professor of soil fertility reported to us.
"This shows a field of corn growing on peaty swamp land, of which there are several hundred thousand acres in the swamp regions of Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. This peaty soil is extremely rich in humus and nitrogen, well supplied with phosphorus and other elements, except potassium; but in this element it is extremely deficient. This land was drained out at large expense, and produced two or three large crops because the fresh grass roots contained some readily available potassium; but after three or four years the corn crop became a complete failure, as you see from the untreated check plot on the right; while the land on the left, where potassium was applied, produced forty-five bushels per acre the year this photograph was taken, and with heavier treatment from sixty to seventy-five bushels are produced."
"Seventy-five bushels would be fifteen barrels of corn per acre.
How's that, Little Wife?" asked Tom.
"It's even more wonderful than the pot culture," replied Mrs.
Thornton; "but how much did the potassium cost, Mr. Johnston."
"About three dollars an acre," replied Percy; "but of course the land has almost no value if not treated; and as a matter of fact the three dollars is less than half the interest on the difference in value between this land and our ordinary corn belt land. These peaty swamp lands are to a large extent in scattered areas, and commonly, if a farmer owns some of this kind of land, he also owns some other good land, perhaps adjoining the swamp; but this is not always the case, and was not with the man in the story I mentioned. This man lived a few miles away and his farm was practically all of this peaty swamp land type. He heard of this experiment field and came with his family to see it.
"As he stood looking, first at the corn on the treated and untreated land, and then at his wife and large family of children, he broke down and cried like a child. Later he explained to the superintendent who was showing him the experiments, that he had put the best of his life into that kind of land. 'The land looked rich,' said he,—'as rich as any land I ever saw. I bought it and drained it and built my home on a sandy knoll. The first crops were fairly good, and we hoped for better crops; but instead they grew worse and worse. We raised what we could on a small patch of sandy land, and kept trying to find out what we could grow on this black bogus land. Sometimes I helped the neighbors and got a little money, but my wife and I and my older children have wasted twenty years on this land. Poverty, poverty, always! How was I to know that this single substance which you call potassium was all we needed to make this land productive and valuable? Oh, if I had only known this twenty years ago, before my wife had worked like a slave,—before my children had grown almost to manhood and womanhood, in poverty and ignorance!'"
"Why wasn't the matter investigated sooner?" asked Miss Russell. "Why didn't the government find out what the land needed long before?"
"I am a Yankee," said Percy. "Why have American statesmen ridden back and forth to the national capitol through a wilderness of depleted and abandoned farms in the eastern states for half a century or more before the first appropriation was made for the purpose of agricultural investigation? and why, even now, does not this rich federal government appropriate to the agricultural experiment station in every state a fund at least equal to the aggregate salaries of the congressmen from the same state, this fund to be used exclusively for the purpose of discovering and demonstrating profitable systems of permanent agriculture on every type of soil? Why do we as a nation expend five hundred million dollars annually for the development of the army and navy, and only fifteen millions for agriculture, the one industry whose ultimate prosperity must measure the destiny of the nation?
"Moralists sometimes tell us that the fall of the Babylonian Empire, the fall of the Egyptian Empire, of the Grecian Empire, and the Roman Empire, were all due to the development of pride and immorality among those peoples; whereas, we believe that civilization tends rather toward peace, security, and higher citizenship. Is not the chief explanation for the ultimate and successive fall of those great empires to be found in the exhausted or wasted agricultural resources of the country?
"The land that once flowed with milk and honey might then support a mighty empire, with independent resources sufficient for times of great emergencies, but now that land seems almost barren and supports a few wandering bands of marauding Arabs and villages of beggars.
"The power and world influence of a nation must pass away with the passing of material resources; for poverty is helpless, and ignorance is the inevitable result of continued poverty. Only the prosperous can afford education or trained intelligence.
"Old land is poorer than new land. There are exceptions, but this is the rule. The fact is known and recognized by all America.
"What does it mean? It means that the practice of the past and present art of agriculture leads toward land ruin,—not only in China, where famine and starvation are common, notwithstanding that thousands and thousands of Chinese are employed constantly in saving every particle of fertilizing material, even gathering the human excrements from every house and by-place in village and country, as carefully as our farmers gather honey from their hives; not only in India where starvation's ghost is always present, where, as a rule, there are more hungry people than the total population of the United States; not only in Russia where famine is frequent; but, likewise in the United States of America, the present practice of the art of agriculture tends toward land ruin.
"Nations rise and fall; so does the productive power of vast areas of land. Better drainage, better seed, better implements, and more thorough tillage, all tend toward larger crops, but they also tend toward ultimate land ruin, for the removal of larger crops only hastens soil depletion.
"To bring about the adoption of systems of farming that will restore our depleted Eastern and Southern soils, and that will maintain or increase the productive power of our remaining fertile lands of the Great Central West, where we are now producing half of the total corn crop of the entire world, is not only the most important material problem of the United States; but to bring this about is worthy of, and will require, the best thought of the most influential men of America. Without a prosperous agriculture here there can be no permanent prosperity for our American institutions. While some small countries can support themselves by conducting trade, commerce, and manufacture, for other countries, American agriculture must not only be self-supporting, but, in large degree, agriculture must support our other great industries.
"Without agriculture, the coal and iron would remain in the earth, the forest would be left uncut, the railroads would be abandoned, the cities depopulated, and the wooded lands and water-ways would again be used only for hunting and fishing. Shall we not remember, for example, that the coal mine yields a single harvest—one crop—and is then forever abandoned; while the soil must yield a hundred—yes, a thousand crops, and even then it must be richer and more productive than at the beginning, if those who come after us are to continue to multiply and replenish the earth.
"Even the best possible system of soil improvement, we must admit, is not the absolute and final solution of this, the most stupendous problem of the United States. If war gives way to peace and pestilence to science, then the time will come when the soils of America shall reach the limit of the highest productive power possible to be permanently maintained, even by the general adoption of the most practical scientific methods; and before that limit is reached, if power, progress, and plenty are to continue in our beloved country, there must be developed and enforced the law of the survival of the fittest; otherwise there is no ultimate future for America different from that of China, India, and Russia, the only great agricultural countries comparable to the United States. An enlightened humanity must grant to all the right to live, but the reproduction and perpetuation of the unfit can never be an absolute and inalienable right.
"Under the present laws and customs, a man may spend half his life in the insane asylum or in the penitentiary, and still be the father of a dozen children with degenerate tendencies. There should be no reproduction from convicted criminals, insane persons, and other degenerates. Thieves, grafters, bribers and bribe-takers all belong in the same class, and it should not be left possible for them to reproduce their kind. They are a burden upon the public which the public must bear, but the public is under no obligation to permit their multiplication. The children of such should never become the parents of others. It is a crime against both the child and the public.
"No doubt you will consider this extremely visionary, and so it is; but unless America can see a vision somewhat like this, a population that is doubling three or four times each century, and an area of depleted soils that is also increasing at a rapid rate will combine to bring our Ship of State into a current against which we may battle in vain; for there is not another New World to bring new wealth, new prosperity, and new life and light after another period of 'Dark Ages.'
"Whether we shall ever apply any such intelligence to the possible improvement of our own race as we have in the great improvement of our cattle and corn is, of course, an open question; but to some extent you will agree that the grafter and the insane, like the poet, are born and not made. Of course there are, and always will be, marked variations, mutants, or 'sports,' but, nevertheless, natural inheritance is the master key to the improvement of every form of life; and it is an encouraging fact that some of the states, as Indiana, for example, have already adopted laws looking toward the reduction of the reproduction of convicted degenerates."