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Show AN ALARMIST. At brief intervals a now alarmist makes bid for fame. Just now it is H. S. Gross, president of the National Soil Fertility league, who declares that the American farmer is a failure as com-1 com-1 pared with the European tiller of the soil, and that at the present rate the people of the United States will be starving to death in the next century. A nation need not starve to death even if it have inefficient farmers and few of them, as is well illustrated by the case of Great Britain, which imports most of its food. Nevertheless it would be an unparalleled un-paralleled calamity if a nation so rich in agricultural resources as the United j States should abandon or neglect shom and -when Mr. Gross declares the Aiperican farmer much less skillful than his European brother, he emphasizes em-phasizes a point which has often been dwelt upon by critics of our agricultural methods. But if the American farmer requires five times as much ground as is needed by his brother across the sea, he generally has available ten times as much. It "will not do to found a criticism solely upon the drawbacks or. the American agricultural system, for it has its merits as well as its disadvantages. disad-vantages. At first sight tho statement that only one-third of our population is now cultivating the soil in this country, whereas two-thirds of the population were engaged in farm work twenty years ago, is terrifying until one considers con-siders that modern machinery has made it possible for one man to do the work that was done by two or three twenty years ago. At all events the United States will not starve to death next year or tho year after or a hundred years hence, and Mr. Gross should possess his soul in patience. No doubt the trend toward the city is a great evil, and ono that should be counteracted by every means possible, but at the same time it must be remembered that the old order changes and that new methods always make" it possible for one generation to live differently from the generation just preceding it, aud as a rulo the succeeding succeed-ing generation lives a little better than its immediate predecessor. The foregoing is not an argument for inefficiency. We waste enough in this country almost to support any of the European nations, and Americans must learn the ways of frugality and conservation, because the pressure of population is becoming more acute year by year. |