| Show the old settler written in salt lake city my dear san Jua ners the matter of due rewards and ji st compensations enters vitally into every legitimate bu burines sines in in which men engage not only in affairs civic and legal tut in farming gardening stock raising it may be more possible to defraud men and get away with it than to cheat nature and escape the penalty when it comes to dealing with the soil you are dealing with one of the most exacting conservators conservatory conserva tors of value this is in the realm of the exact sciences this is not implying that the soil is niggardly in its concessions on the contrary it is very generous but it keeps unfailing and accurate accounts the cool spring pours its sparkling current from the hillside and we divert its entire yield to our water system with no concern to make any compensating response all air the same the compensation pensa tion is attended to if it were not the spring would go dry the sources of that spring deep in the earth are replenished in full for every second inch of water it supplies otherwise the supply would fail if it were within our power to make that spring pour out at a greater rate than it is receiving it would cease to be what it is f for or it can give n no 0 more than the rains and snows give to it but we do have the power to make the land yield in excess of what it receives and it becomes like the man who tries to spend three dollars a day when he h e is is receiving only two he is courting pauperism we can pauperize our land and then condemn it in i n bitter terms f for or not being what wha t we think it should be every element that is taken from the land has to be returned as unfailingly as the rains and the snows return to the spring what it gives out you cannot take the crops off a piece of ground year after year without incurring a debt to that piece of ground the ground may trust you at first but when it finds you defaulting on your payments it quits when animals eat the vegetation from the soil they return thel the essential elements in a natural and complete system of reciprocity and the soil is not depleted by their use but we have an artificial method of hauling the wealth of our soil away to enrich some other place or to be lost while our own acres become pitiably impoverished this is all the more pronounced with the adoption of power machinery and the scrapping of the good old horse or mule that used to do so much f for or us in more ways than one every farm to be a complete and safe process must have livestock on it or there must be a regular and honest provision for supplying fertilizers at regular intervals and in the full degree to which the cropping has made them due to the soil the farm manure on the land or in the corral is one of th the 6 valuable a b ae items of crop and will pay well continued on page eight the old settler continued from first fir st page for being conserved and utilized utilize di with as much care as any other crop some of the best arid farms farm s ln in the west encourage sheep he herds rd s to feed there or to graze there whenever it can be done without spoiling a crop and they divert back to that land the elements which they have taken from it some of san juans best land h has a s already been shamefully robbed and if this prodigal method is to continue there will be a story of discouragement to tell about the country on the other hand if its colloidal values are preserved and increased as sane men build up and preserve their business it will become better and better with the years yours for the good of san juan ALBERT R LYMAN |
