"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 the crop and pay the rent for the land or interest and taxes on the investment. With land worth $150 an acre, it will require $8 to pay the interest and taxes. Another $8 will be required to raise the crop and harvest and market it, even with very inadequate provision made for maintaining the productive power of the soil, such as a catch crop of clover, or a very light dressing of farm fertilizer. A forty-bushel crop of corn at forty cents a bushel, which is about the ten year average price for Illinois, would bring only $16 an acre, and this would leave no profit whatever.
"A crop of fifty bushels would leave only ten bushels as profit; but, if we could double the yield and thus produce a hundred bushels per acre, the profit would not be doubled only, but it would be six times as great as from the fifty bushel crop. In other words, 100 bushels of corn from one acre would yield practically the same profit as fifty bushels per acre from six acres, simply because it requires the first forty bushels from each acre to pay for the fixed charges or regular expense.
"It is not the amount of crop the farmer handles, but the amount of actual profit that determines his prosperity. It requires profit to build the new home or repair the old one, to provide the home with the comforts and conveniences that are now to be had in the country as well as in the city; to send the boys and girls to college; to provide for the expense of travel and the luxuries of the home."
Percy stopped himself with an apology.
"I hope you will pardon me, Miss West. I forget that this subject may be of no interest to you, and I have completely monopolized the conversation."
"I am glad you have told me so much," she replied. "I am deeply interested in what you have been saying. I never realized that agriculture could involve such very important questions in regard to our national prosperity. I only know that our farm has furnished us with a living but there has been very little of what you call profit. We children could never have gone away to school except that we were enabled to take advantage of some unusual opportunities. My brother almost earned his expenses as commissary in a boarding club at college. He felt that he could not come home for Thanksgiving because he had a chance to earn something and I have missed him so much. Most farmers get barely enough from their farms in these parts to furnish them a modest living and pay their taxes."
"That reminds me of your statement that farming is the last thing that you would expect anyone to undertake. In a large sense that is in accordance with the history of all great agricultural countries. After the great wave of easy spoilation of the land has passed, and the farmers reach a condition under which they need most of what they produce for their own consumption, the parasites are themselves forced to produce their own food. The lands become divided into smaller holdings and the agricultural inhabitants increase rapidly in proportion to the urban population which must depend upon the profits from secondary pursuits for a living. Thus ninety-five per cent. of the three hundred million people of India belong principally to the agricultural classes, and the farms of India average about two to three acres in size. Farming there is in no sense a profit-yielding business, but it is only a means of existence. The people live upon what they raise, so far as they can, although, as you must know, India is almost never free from famine. In Russia, the situation is but little better, for famine follows if the yield of wheat falls two bushels below the average. Special agents of the Bureau of Statistics of the United States Department of Agriculture report that at least one famine year occurs in each five year period, and sometimes even two; that the famine years are so frequent they are recognized as a permanent feature of Russian agriculture."
"But couldn't those poor starving people do some other kind of work and thus earn a better living?" asked Adelaide.
"No. Agriculture is the only hope," said Percy. "The soil is the breast of Mother Earth, from which her children must always draw their nourishment, or perish. It is the 'last thing,' as you truly said. Aside from hunting and fishing, there is no source of food except the soil, and, when this is insufficient for the people who produce it in the country, God pity the poor people who live in the cities. But let us not talk of this more. I ought not to have taken up the time of our ride through this beautiful scenery with a subject which tends always toward the serious. The leaves are all gone in New England, but here they have only taken on their most beautiful colors. 'What is so rare as a day in June?' could now well be answered, 'a day in November in Piedmont, Virginia.'"
"Do you know if your father received a letter for me from the chemist to whom I sent the soil samples?"