You will wish to know also that the Ohio Station has conducted a five-year rotation of corn, oats, wheat, clover, and timothy for the last fifteen years, both with and without the application of commercial plant food.  As an average of the fifteen years the unfertilized and fertilized tracts have produced, respectively: 

30 and 48 bushels of corn

32 and 50 bushels of oats and 27 bushels of wheat .9 and 1.6 tons of clover

1.3 and 1.8 tons of timothy

In 1908 the unfertilized land produced nine-tenths ton of clover, while land treated with farm manure produced three and two-tenths tons per acre.

You will welcome the information that the average yield of wheat on an Illinois experiment field down here in “Egypt,” in a four-year rotation, including both cowpeas and clover, has been eleven and one-half bushels on unfertilized land, fourteen bushels where legume crops have been plowed under, and twenty-seven bushels where limestone and phosphorus have been added with the legume crops turned under; and that the aggregate value of the four crops, corn, oats, wheat, and clover, from another “Egyptian” farm, has been $25.97 per acre on unfertilized land, and $54.24 where limestone and phosphorus have been applied.

In your very busy and very successful railroad experience, you may have overlooked the reports of the Pennsylvania Agricultural Experiment Station, showing the results of a four-year rotation of crops that has been conducted with very great care for more than a quarter of a century.  These, you will agree, are exactly such absolute data as we sorely need just now when facing the stupendous problem of changing from an agricultural system whose equal has never been known for rapidity of soil exhaustion to a system which shall actually enrich the land.  By averaging the results from the first twelve years and also those from the second twelve years, in this rotation of corn, oats, wheat, and hay (clover and timothy), we find that the yields have decreased as follows: 

Corn decreased 34 per cent.

Oats decreased 31 per cent.

Wheat decreased 4 per cent.

Hay decreased 29 per cent.

Appalling, is it not?  It is the best information America affords in answer to the question, Will the rotation of crops actually enrich the land?

No, Sir.  We cannot make crops nor bank accounts out of nothing.  The rotation of crops does not enrich the soil, does not even maintain the fertility of the soil.  On the contrary, the rotation of crops, like the rotation of your check book, actually depletes the soil more rapidly than the single system; and, if you ever have your choice between two farms of equal original fertility, one of which has been cropped with wheat only, and the other with a good three or five-year rotation, for fifty years, take my advice and choose the “worn-out” wheat farm.  Then adopt a good system of cropping with