to use their
high-priced artificial soil stimulants, very large areas of land are
being agriculturally abandoned. Thus the following statement appears
in the report of the United States Bureau of Census in regard to the
farm land of Massachusetts:

"The area of improved land decreased without interruption until in
1910 it was only about one-half what it was in 1880."

It should not be forgotten, however, that market gardeners often
sell from $100 to $300 worth of produce from an acre and they can
well afford to use large amounts of soluble commercial plant food
(acid phosphate, nitrates, etc.) as well as animal manures from the
cities.

Is the Soil Inexhaustible?

It is not the fault of the farmer alone that soil-robbing and land
ruin have followed his work in America. Neither the average farmer
of today nor any of his ancestors received any agricultural
instruction in the schools; and the greedy fertilizer agent has
persuaded him to buy his patent soil medicine and has taken $100 of
the farmer's money and given him in return only $10 worth of what he
really needs to buy; and even the Bureau of Soils of the Federal
Government has for several years promulgated the erroneous and
condemnable theory expressed in the following quotations:

"From the modern conception of the nature and purpose of the soil it
is evident that it cannot wear out; that, so far as the mineral food
is concerned, it will continue automatically to supply adequate
quantities of the mineral plant foods for crops." (United States
Bureau of Soils, Bulletin No. 55, p. 79.)

"There is another way in which the fertility of the soil can be
maintained: namely, by arranging a system of rotation and growing
each year a crop that is not injured by the excreta of the preceding
crop: then when the time comes round for the first crop to be
planted again, the soil has had ample time to dispose of the sewage
resulting from the growth of the plant two or three years before."
(United States Farmers' Bulletin No. 257, p. 21.)

"The soil is the one indestructible, immutable asset that the nation
possesses. It is the one resource that cannot be exhausted; that
cannot be used up." (United States Bureau of Soils, Bulletin No. 55,
p. 66.)

And these are only samples of the false teaching spread abroad by
this bureau of theorists, even though the congressmen of the United
States can not enter the capitol of the nation from any direction
without passing depleted