te of
cultivation--drained, clean, mellow, and rich--it would usually pay them
well to grow crops which require the most labor.

And it should never be forgotten that, as compared with nearly all other
countries, our labor is expensive. No matter how cheap our land may be,
we can not afford to waste our labor. It is too costly. If men would
work for nothing, and board themselves, there are localities where we
could perhaps afford to keep sheep that shear two pounds of wool a year;
or cows that make 75 lbs. of butter. We might make a profit out of a
wheat crop of 8 bushels per acre, or a corn-crop of 15 bushels, or a
potato-crop of 50 bushels. But it cannot be done with labor costing from
$1.00 to $1.25 per day. And I do not believe labor will cost much less
in our time. The only thing we can do is to employ it to the best
advantage. Machinery will help us to some extent, but I can see no real
escape from our difficulties in this matter, except to raise larger
crops per acre.

In ordinary farming, "larger crops per acre" means fewer acres planted
or sown with grain. It means more summer fallow, more grass, clover,
peas, mustard, coleseed, roots, and other crops that are consumed on the
farm. It means more thorough cultivation. It means clean and rich land.
It means husbanding the ammonia and nitric acid, which is brought to the
soil, as well as that which is developed from the soil, or which the
soil attracts from the atmosphere, and using it to grow a crop every
second, third, or fourth year, instead of every year. If a piece of land
will grow 25 bushels of corn every year, we should aim to so manage it,
that it will grow 50 every other year, or 75 every third year, or, if
the _climate_ is capable of doing it, of raising 100 bushels per acre
every fourth year.

Theoretically this can be done, and in one of Mr. Lawes' experiments he
did it practically in the case of a summer-fallow for wheat, the one
crop in two years giving a little more than two crops sown in
succession. But on sandy land we should probably lose a portion of the
liberated plant-food, unless we grew a crop of some kind every year. And
the matter organized in the renovating crop could not be rendered
completely available for the next crop. _In the end_, however, we ought
to be able to get it with little or no loss. How best to accomplish this
result, is one of the most interesting and important fields for
scientific investigation and practical experim