Truly truth is stranger than fiction. Back of the restoration of a thousand barren fields restored to productiveness in the simply way named, lies one of the world’s greatest romances in patient scientific investigation that will continue to bring untold benefits to mankind. You know the story of Professor Nobbe, of Forest Academy, Germany. He also knew that clover and other legumens of the plant family would restore fertility to the soil. But why? After long and exhaustive study, labor and experiment, he found that the clover family were nature’s chemist of the soil; that by an invisible, intangible cord of attraction they drew from the inexhaustible reservoir of the air nitrogen so necessary to plant and animal life.
We are told that “nitrogen is what makes the muscles and brain of man; that it is the essential element of all elements in the growth of animals and plants, and, significantly enough, it is also the chief constituent of the gunpowder and other explosives with which the wars of the world are waged. The single discharge of a 13-inch gun liberates enough nitrogen to produce scores of bushels of wheat.”
Some day, through this agency, man may turn his attention entirely from war to the production of food, and in that hour true conservation of life will have reached its triumph.
We are further told that four-fifths of the air we breath is nitrogen, and that four-fifths of the atmosphere around us is nitrogen, so that if mankind dies of nitrogen starvation, it will die with food everywhere in and about it.
So that, while the human race may be but from three to six months behind abject starvation, the fact begins to appear that through science “mankind has just begun to sound the world’s capacity for food production and that it is practically limitless.”
The proper conservation of the soil by the application of the research of scientific discovery means increased yields of all plant crops, with but little greater expenditure of energy. This would enable the producer of food and clothing to sell more pounds, bushels and yards at less cost, and still reap as great reward for his labor as at present. This would forestall the Malthusian doctrine that population increases faster than the means of subsistence and, still better, would help to solve the high cost of living that presses so sorely upon the millions throughout the world today. Man is a productive machine; so the more machines of the highest type the world possesses the better for the world.
This conservation movement that is so strongly taking hold of the minds of thinking men and women, is so big, so broad and so comprehensive that it covers every phase of human thought and activity in what is best and highest for the individual as well as organized society. It is education in the broadest sense.
The Golden Rule is not only a statement but a living principle. To teach that a just distribution of nature’s gifts to each individual who is willing to earn and conserve his share is a recognition of that principle.
The City of Indianapolis esteems it a high honor to have this Congress with us. To all of its members, and especially to the distinguished men from other lands who have come to give us their best thought upon the various questions affecting this great movement, we extend our most cordial welcome and greeting, and our deep appreciation of your presence.
Our commercial organizations also cordially join in holding the door of welcome and hospitality open to you, and bespeak for your deliberations their kindest sympathy and deepest interest.