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Show L ftltf &&&' tm ilMtfii W "jH I. THE 2 Meisifisr SM CITIZEN 15 s BDwdq M28oSsojpipE More than 512 million tons of soil are being washed out to sea each year from the farms of the United States. The Mississippi River system alone is responsible for 428 million tons of this traffic in 'wastage, according to .Hugh Hammond Bennett of the United States Department of Agriculture. Try to visualize this trucks in a quantity loaded on parade. If it were possible for such a parade to pass a reviewing stand at a speed of one truck a second it would be necessary to provide for approximately seven trucks abreast and the parade would have to continue day and night, year in and year out, to cart away such a load as the Mississippi dumps into the Gulf of 2-t- on Mexico. This is a minimum estimate for the Mississippi. More comprehensive methods of measurement devised recently indicate that these figures do not allow adequately for the heavier material carried along the bed of the river. Neither does this estimate take into account the fact that a great deal more material is washed out of the fields than ever reaches the sea. Much is stranded on the way and causes inconvenience to man by creating sandbars, filling up river channels, covering fertile fields with flood debris, and the like. This continuous and heavy loss of the soil on which the very food supply of the Nation depends is interpreted by Mr. Bennett as the most important problem that has to do with the use of our most vital resource the land. He says, most of us in this part of North America have entertained no very serious suspicion as to the destructiveness of erosion. We have failed generally to recognize this as a problem of vast importance. But to confine the menace within the bounds of reasonable safety is going to tax the best efforts and ingenuity of the Nation. Our soil is going over great areas. In many localities it has gone, insofar as practical- agriculture is concerned What shall we do about it ?" Mr. Bennett, who asks the question; has observed and studied erosion and soil wastes in all their many phases on soils of many kinds and in all parts of the Nation from Vermont to California and from Minnesota to Texas. He admits frankly that he can not supply more than scattering fragments of the answer. Terracing of cultifields, contour ploughing and the vation, wise forestry management, . - conservation for forestry or grazing of sharply sloping lands that are sure to wash away if cultivated, and scrupulous attention to gullies while they are small to prevent enlargement, are parts of the answer. Some apply under certain conditions and with certain soils and will not serve under different conditions The problem, Mr. Bennett asserts, is so important that it demands the best cooperative effort of engineers, of chemists and physicists among the soil scientists, and of practical farmers. What is the money cost ? Mr. Bennett makes no attempt at an inclusive estimate. He does point out that on the basis of the chemical analysis of nearly 400 surface soils it may be estimated that the amount of material washed away from the fields of the country each year contains not less than 126 billion pounds of plant food. This is a loss we have not stressed in our land inventories, yet it is about 21 times the annual net loss of plant food taken out of the fields by all the crops that are harvested. We have stressed, and rightly, the unwisdom of soil mining by continuous cropping, yet we have been blind to the much more serious loss of plant food through erosion. In a soil depleted of one or more of the elements of plant food essential to growth, it is usually possible to supply this in the form of fertilizer. But when the soil has been washed away the use of fertilizer is not effective. Measured on the basis of chemical analysis, the value of the phosphorus, potassium, and nitrogen contained in the material washed from the fields each year would cost something in excess of 2 billion dollars if purchased at current market prices for the cheapest commercial carriers of these three essential plant foods. For obvious reasons, Mr. Bennett continues, it would not be correct to put this entire amount down as a direct, tangible, yearly loss to the farmers of the Nation. Certain it is, however, that the cost digs into the pockets of the farmers, often deeply, particularly of those who operate on the more sloping, vulnerable soil types, comprising large areas of the country's farm and grazing lands: . may be true, as Shakespeare said, that all the world is a stage but you can't get by with stage money. It Chosen by her classmates for her beauty and charm of personality, Miss Letha Monson was adjudged winner of the annual popularity contest of the Junior class of the Latter-da- y Saint's student nurses' corps. Miss Monson is a member of the 1929 graduating class and presided over tlie annual ball given by the Junior class in honor of the Senior members at the Hotel Utah ballroom February 22. Miss Monson, prior to her past three year's study in Salt Lake City, was a resident of Downey, Idaho and is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Fred L. Monson of that city. Boston is to have Sunday baseball this summer which would seem to indicate that the Puritans came over to Massachusetts in vain. . It is said that Jascha Heifitz has earned nearly two million dollars in America since 1917 just by playing the violin. That's a lot of money to scrape up in twelve years. i One company of gangsters in Chicago wipes out seven other gangsters, showing they are more efficient than the police in cleaning up t the town. One big reason why we are dubious about the Capper resolution on arms exportation is the unanimity with which European diplomats tell us what a good thing it would he for us. |