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Show WHAT IS YOUR INTENTION? Are you a land owner? It so, what is your intention with regard to the land that you own? Do you propose to regard it merely as a business investment, and to extract from it every possible dollar of profit? prof-it? We have known farmers whose treatment of their land was calculated calcu-lated to leave the impression that they were the ones for whom it was originally created, and that when they should cease to need it no other use would ever be made of it. On the other hand, there are men and many of them who, while striving to make their land as productive pro-ductive as possible, have yet an eye to the future owners. Every farmer, when he takes charge of a piece of ground, should frame this simple resolution: "I do hereby resolve that, whether my occupancy of this land be long or short, I will use every means at my command to leave it more productive than when I found it." If this were the guiding principle of every farmer's life, what a blessed and productive country ours would become in a few generations of time! And why not? Every farmer who has ever worked with impoverished soil knows how discouraging and heart sickening is the stnuggle. And every farmer who has honestly honest-ly endeavored to improve his land to appoint or real productiveness knows how gratifying it is to see his yield mount upward from year to year and to feel that as the seasons go by he is adding substantially to tne weaun of this country for after all is said, land is the great tangible asset of the earth. The man who causes two blades of grass to grow where only one was growing is a benefactor of mankind. The man who so depletes his soil that only one blade will grow where two formerly grew, is a thief. Harti wordsi yes, hard, but true. No man has a right to impoverish the Boil, even if he does hold a title deed to it. At best it is only his for a season, when it must pass on to another rightful owner. And what about the rights of that next owner? And the next, and the next? When you pursue a policy that impoverishes im-poverishes your land it goes to your son at your demise poorer than when you received it. Have you, in that event, been hon-tst hon-tst with your son? He had a right to receive from you what you received receiv-ed certainly no less. Will the farmers of America rob the unborn generations, or will they leave for them the legacy of a better land than they themselves inherited? It is a personal question which cacti individual must answer for himself. |