PROBLEM OF THE WHEAT.
"That is a little more than twice what you are raising today, and you haven't any new fields to put a new plow in. From 1882, when we raised 504,000,000 bushels of wheat, following that time more than half of Minnesota, all the northern part of Minnesota, was brought under the plow, all of North Dakota, all of South Dakota, all of the state of Washington and all of Oregon, except 3,000,000 or 4,000,000 bushels raised in 1882, more than half of California, two-thirds or three-quarters in Kansas and Nebraska, a large part, practically all of Oklahoma or the Indian Territory and a large part of Texas, and take what was raised in 1907 on the new fields that were opened up, any new territory after 1882, and you will find that it is approaching 300,000,000 bushels, but the increase in the whole country in that twenty-five years was only 130,000,000 bushels, so that the old fields fell off about 170,000,000 bushels.
"Are we increasing our yield per acre? By no manner of means. It has been a steady and uniform decline for the past thirty years. Now, we have as good wheat fields as there are anywhere on the continent, and they will be made better. I am not a disciple of Malthus, because Malthus was an honest man no doubt, but when he wrote he did not understand the science of modern agriculture or the adaptation of the soil or of the seed to the soil, or the commercial value of a correct analysis of the soil and the adaptation of the soil nor its commercial value as suited to the crop it is best fitted for. All these things we have learned, and while you are teaching your young people let me advise you that the school that is most entitled to your care and the school that will do the most for the state in every place and will turn out men and women as they have always in industry and intelligence and everything else that goes to make good citizenship, the school attended by the boy on the farm is certainly as good as the best.
"When your forests are cut and hauled away, and sold to somebody else you have then, and we will give you a perennial forest, a crop every year of great value too. But we ought to be able to take care of our land and we will. I have no doubt about the future. We will do what other people have been compelled to do. In 1790, Great Britain was down to fourteen bushels. We are down to thirteen and nine-tenths now, average. They took the question up and it was much easier for them to control, as far as territory was concerned, because the territory was small, in the hands of a few land owners, mostly rented, and they faced conditions compelling the land owner to sub-fallow, and fertilize and carry one crop year after year. They appointed a royal commission and that royal commission went to work jointly. We have a royal commission, too, and they are able men. One is a professor at Cornell and another is a publisher of books in New York, and another is Mr. Pinchot, who is doing a great deal of work, but he is overrun with the work he has to do. This commission is to report in time for the meeting of Congress. Now, bear this in mind, Great Britain started in 1790 trying to keep the people on the land. The landlord was afraid of the great drift of the agricultural people to the colonies and the new republic, the United States at that time. The new republic was going to impoverish them, and leave them without any rent rolls. They went to work intelligently and in 1810 and 1811 Sir Humphrey David, the foremost scientist of his time, delivered most intelligent lectures on the qualities of the soil. In forty or fifty years after they started they had gotten their yield up to an average of twenty-five bushels per acre. Last year, it was 32.2. Starting at fourteen we ought to get up in place of 13.9 or 14, we ought to be able to get up to 28 or 30, and if we do we will have grain to feed our 200,000,000 people and to spare, and what do I hear? 'Some more, and then some?' Now in going over those questions, I am not worrying about the future of the country. I have more confidence in it today, the day for cheap wheat has left the United States, not to return, and we can stand that. This land, this side of the range, you can devote to better uses than raising wheat. I do not know why you should not get returns, as I said, that would equal 10 per cent. on $2,000 per acre. You can do it. There is no question as to that."
[SOUTHERN RAILWAYS AND THEIR NEEDS]
by
John F. Wallace.
Abstract of Address before Southern Commercial Congress Washington, D. C., Dec. 7 and 8, 1908.