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Show POINTS FOR SUCCESS j Sunshine and Nitrogen Are Two Great Essentials. Plowing Under of Turf, Mixed In With Little Irrigation, Farmer Never Need Fear Failure Increase Fertility. The farmer man or boy must be constantly reminded of the value of crop rotation, live stock, grazing, barn-yard muck, good seed and deep tillage or he wijl not get along very well. Only the other day Burbank told me that the two great essentials in our economic existence are sunshine sun-shine and nitrogen the one and tliCj, same but interchangeably different in producing all that the world contains, con-tains, writes Eugene H. Grubb in the Denver Field and Farm. With these essentials and the plowing under the turf mixed in with a little irrigation we will never have a crop failure. We will continually increase fertility and get larger yields, just as do the farmers farm-ers of Great Britain. It is a deplorable fact that the American fanner is producing, under the most favorable conditions, only one-third of the crops which the European Eu-ropean farmer is raising under extremely ex-tremely bad conditions. Another significant sig-nificant fact is that the fertility and productivity of the European farm is gradually increasing while that of the average United States farm is decreasing, de-creasing, in about the same inverse ratio. This is true, despite the fact that the farms of Europe have been worked for 2,000 years. The corn area of the United States is practically practi-cally developed. There are no new fields except in Argentina where we can look for increased production of corn for human food or the making of meats. The only solution of the problem of securing cheaper prices for the food of the people of this nation' is to double or treble the acre yield. The capabilities of the soil are treble, if not quadruple, what the land is now being made to show. We cannot too soon adopt the methods and principles princi-ples of European agriculture. The stinginess of the United States government gov-ernment in appropriating a measly $15,000,000 a year for the furtherance of the great cause of agriculture is almost inconceivable. Practically the entire wealth of the country is created creat-ed by the farmer and the miner. Out of the earth comes wealth in nearly all its forms. The value of the nation's na-tion's crops approaches $9,000,000,000 annually and this amount can be trebled if the farmer is given the proper knowledge of scientific methods. meth-ods. The prosperity which will ensue en-sue will reach every line of industry, without exception. The appropriation by the government govern-ment for agricultural purposes should not be one cent less than $100,000,000 every year. It would be incomparably incompar-ably the best Investment that congress con-gress could make. One of the most valuable factors for the education of the farmer along right lines is the agricultural ag-ricultural college yet this Institution Is giving the farmer of the nation Dnly half-measure. We are today misapplying the revenues from the Morrill act. The bill, enacted in the early sixties, was most wise in its conception. It provided ample funds for the education of the masses along agricultural and mechanical lines, but we are not getting it. . If the w'ise provisions pro-visions of that act were carried out, particularly the one requiring that each and every student shall work not less than two nor more than four hours a day at vmanual labor in the field or shop, our free agricultural schools would not be overcrowded by men and women seeking university professions to the exclusion of many who are earnest in their desire to conquer soil problems. If the student Is pursuing a literary course exclusively in the agricultural college, where he does not belong, he would soon seek other sources of culture. cul-ture. Only by a combination of the technical study of the class room and the practical work of the field the farmer student can be educated up to the fullness of his capacity to get the most, from the feed lot and the soil. Another regrettable fact of our institutions insti-tutions and conditions is the loss of the apprenticeship system in our trades. .We are now compelled to rely upon the mechanics that come from Europe to do our work. If the agricultural colleges would live up to the requirements of the Morrill act we would give the American boy an Dpportunity to acquire a mechanical education. v |