“Throughout the length and breadth of this land, the almost universal purpose of the farmers is to work the land for all they can get with practically no thought of permanency.  The most common remark of the corn belt farmer is that his land doesn’t show much wear yet; and it is holding up pretty well, or as well as could be expected; or that he thinks it will last as long as he does.  All recognize that the land cannot hold up under the systems of farming that are being practiced, and these systems are essentially the same as have been followed in America since 1607.  What the Southern farmer did with slave labor, the Western farmer is now doing with the gang plow, the two-row cultivator, and the four-horse disks and harrows.  In addition he tile-drains his land which helps to insure larger crops and more rapid soil depletion.  He even uses clover as a soil stimulant, and spreads the farm fertilizer as thinly as possible with a machine made for the purpose in order to secure both its plant food value and its stimulating effect.  Positive soil enrichment is practically unknown in the great corn belt.

“Robbery is a harsh word; and yet the farmers and landowners of America are and always have been soil robbers; and they not only rob the nation of the possibility of permanent prosperity, but they even rob themselves of the very comforts of life in their old age and their children and grandchildren of a rightful inheritance.

“Worse than all this, or at least more lamentable, is the fact that it need not be.  The soils of Virginia need not have become worn out and abandoned; because the earth and the air are filled with the elements of plant food that are essential to the restoration and permanent maintenance of the high productive capacity of these soils.  Moreover there is more profit and greater prosperity for the present landowner in a possible practicable system of positive soil improvement than under any system which leads to ultimate depletion and abandonment of the land.

“The profit in farming lies first of all in securing large crop yields.  It costs forty bushels of corn per acre in Illinois to raise the crop and pay the rent for the land or interest and taxes on the investment.  With land worth $150 an acre, it will require $8 to pay the interest and taxes.  Another $8 will be required to raise the crop and harvest and market it, even with very inadequate provision made for maintaining the productive power of the soil, such as a catch crop of clover, or a very light dressing of farm fertilizer.  A forty-bushel crop of corn at forty cents a bushel, which is about the ten year average price for Illinois, would bring only $16 an acre, and this would leave no profit whatever.

“A crop of fifty bushels would leave only ten bushels as profit; but, if we could double the yield and thus produce a hundred bushels per acre, the profit would not be doubled only, but it would be six times as great as from the fifty bushel crop.  In other words, 100 bushels of corn from one acre would yield practically the same profit as fifty bushels per acre from six acres, simply because it requires the first forty bushels from each acre to pay for the fixed charges or regular expense.