Farmers of Forty Centuries Part 8

He was renting the land, paying therefor forty kan of rice per tan, and his usual yield was eighty kan. This is forty-four bushels of sixty pounds per acre. In unfavorable seasons his yield might be less but still his rent would be forty kan per tan unless it was clear that he had done all that could reasonably be expected of him in securing the crop. It is difficult for Americans to understand how it is possible for the will of man, even when spurred by the love of home and family, to hold flesh to tasks like these.

The second and third cuttings of herbage from the genya lands in j.a.pan are used for the preparation of compost applied on the dry-land fields in the fall or in the spring of the following season. Some of these lands are pastured, but approximately 10,185,500 tons of green herbage grown and gathered from the hills contributes much of its organic matter and all of its ash to enrich the cultivated fields. Such wild growth areas in j.a.pan are the commons of the near by villages, to which the people are freely admitted for the purpose of cutting the herbage. A fixed time may be set for cutting and a limit placed upon the amount which may be carried away, which is done in the manner seen in Fig. 115. It is well recognized by the people that this constant cutting and removal of growth from the hill lands, with no return, depletes the soils and reduces the amount of green herbage they are able to secure.

Through the kindness of Dr. Daikuhara of the Imperial Agricultural Experiment Station at Tokyo we are able to give the average composition of the green leaves and young stems of five of the most common wild species of plants cut for green manure in June. In each 1000 pounds the amount of water is 562.18 pounds; of organic matter, 382.68 pounds; of ash, 55.14 pounds; nitrogen, 4.78 pounds; pota.s.sium, 2.407 pounds, and phosphorus, .34 pound. On the basis of this composition and an aggregate yield of 10,185,500 tons, there would be annually applied to the cultivated fields 3463 tons of phosphorus and 24,516 tons of pota.s.sium derived from the genya lands.

In addition to this the run-off from both the mountain and the genya lands is largely used upon the rice fields, more than sixteen inches of water being applied annually to them in some prefectures. If such waters have the composition of river waters in North America, twelve inches of water applied to the rice fields of the three main islands would contribute no less than 1200 tons of phosphorus and 19,000 tons of pota.s.sium annually.

Dr. Kawaguchi, of the National Department of Agriculture and Commerce, informed us that in 1908 j.a.panese farmers prepared and applied to their fields 22,812,787 tons of compost manufactured from the wastes of cattle, horses, swine and poultry, combined with herbage, straw and other similar wastes and with soil, sod or mud from ditches and ca.n.a.ls. The amount of this compost is sufficient to apply 1.78 tons per acre of cultivated land of the southern three main islands.

From data obtained at the Nara Experiment Station, the composition of compost as there prepared shows it to contain, in each 2000 pounds, 550 pounds of organic matter; 15.6 pounds of nitrogen; 8.3 pounds of pota.s.sium, and 5.24 pounds of phosphorus. On this basis 22,800,000 tons of compost will carry 59,700 tons of phosphorus and 94,600 tons of pota.s.sium. The construction of compost houses is ill.u.s.trated in Fig. 116, reproduced from a large circular sent to farmers from the Nara Experiment Station, and an exterior of one at the Nara Station is given in Fig. 117.

This compost house is designed to serve two and a half acres. Its floor is twelve by eighteen feet, rendered watertight by a mixture of clay, lime and sand. The walls are of earth, one foot thick, and the roof is thatched with straw. Its capacity is sixteen to twenty tons, having a cash value of 60 yen, or $30. In preparing the stack, materials are brought daily and, spread over one side of the compost floor until the pile has attained a height of five feet. After one foot in depth has been laid and firmed, 1.2 inches of soil or mud is spread over the surface and the process repeated until full height has been attained. Water is added sufficient to keep the whole saturated and to maintain the temperature below that of the body.

After the compost stacks have been completed they are permitted to stand five weeks in summer, seven weeks in winter, when they are forked over and transferred to the opposite side of the house.

If we state in round numbers the total nitrogen, phosphorus and pota.s.sium thus far enumerated which j.a.panese farmers apply or return annually to their twenty or twenty-one thousand square miles of cultivated fields, the case stands 385,214 tons of nitrogen, 91,656 tons of phosphorus and 255,778 tons of pota.s.sium. These values are only approximations and do not include the large volume and variety of fertilizers prepared from fish, which have long been used.

Neither do they include the very large amount of nitrogen derived directly from the atmosphere through their long, extensive and persistent cultivation of soy beans and other legumes. Indeed, from 1903 to 1906 the average area of paddy field upon which was grown a second crop of green manure in the form of some legume was 6.8 per cent of the total area of such fields aggregating 11,000 square miles. In 1906 over 18 per cent of the upland fields also produced some leguminous crop, these fields aggregating between 9,000 and 10,000 square miles.

While the values which have been given above, expressing the sum total of nitrogen, phosphorus and pota.s.sium applied annually to the cultivated fields of j.a.pan may be somewhat too high for some of the sources named, there is little doubt that j.a.panese farmers apply to their fields more of these three plant food elements annually than has been computed. The amounts which have been given are sufficient to provide annually, for each acre of the 21,321 square miles of cultivated land, an application of not less than 56 pounds of nitrogen, 13 pounds of phosphorus and 37 pounds of pota.s.sium. Or, if we omit the large northern island of Hokkaido, still new in its agriculture and lacking the intensive practices of the older farm land, the quant.i.ties are sufficient for a mean application of 60, 14 and 40 pounds respectively of nitrogen, phosphorus and pota.s.sium per acre, and yet the maturing of 1000 pounds of wheat crop, covering grain and straw as water-free substance, removes from the soil but 13.9 pounds of nitrogen, 2.3 pounds of phosphorus and 8.4 pounds of pota.s.sium, from which it may be computed that the 60 pounds of nitrogen added is sufficient for a crop yielding 31 bushels of wheat; the phosphorus is sufficient for a crop of 44 bushels, and the pota.s.sium for a crop of 35 bushels per acre. Dr. Hopkins, in his recent valuable work on "Soil Fertility and Permanent Agriculture"

gives, on page 154, a table from which we abstract the following data:

APPROXIMATE AMOUNTS OF NITROGEN, PHOSPHORUS AND POTa.s.sIUM REMOVABLE PER ACRE ANNUALLY BY Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Pota.s.sium, pounds. pounds. pounds.

100 bush. crop of corn 148 23 71 100 bush. crop of oats 97 16 68 50 bush. crop of wheat 96 16 58 25 bush. crop of soy beans 159 21 73 100 bush. crop of rice 155 18 95 3 ton crop of timothy hay 72 9 71 4 ton crop of clover hay 160 20 120 3 ton crop of cow pea hay 130 14 98 8 ton crop of alfalfa hay 400 36 192 7000 lb. crop of cotton 168 29.4 82 400 bush. crop of potatoes 84 17.3 120 20 ton crop of sugar beets 100 18 157 Annually applied in j.a.pan, more than 60 14 40

We have inserted in this table, for comparison, the crop of rice, and have increased the crop of potatoes from three hundred bushels to four hundred bushels per acre, because such a yield, like all of those named, is quite practicable under good management and favorable seasons, notwithstanding the fact that much smaller yields are generally attained through lack of sufficient plant food or water. From this table, a.s.suming that a crop of matured grain contains 11 per cent of water and the straw 15 per cent, while potatoes contain 79 per cent and beets 87 per cent, the amounts of the three plant food elements removable annually by 1000 pounds of crop have been calculated and stated in the next table.

APPROXIMATE AMOUNTS OF NITROGEN, PHOSPHORUS AND POTa.s.sIUM REMOVABLE ANNUALLY PER 1,0000 POUNDS OF DRY CROP SUBSTANCE Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Pota.s.sium, pounds. pounds. pounds.

Cereals.

Wheat 13.873 2.312 8.382 Oats 13.666 2.254 9.580 Corn 13.719 2.149 6.676 Legumes.

Soy beans 30.807 4.070 14.147 Cow peas 25.490 2.745 19.216 Clover 23.529 2.941 17.647 Alfalfa 29.411 2.647 14.118 Roots.

Beets 19.213 3.462 30.192 Potatoes 15.556 3.210 22.222 Gra.s.s.

Timothy 14.117 1.765 13.922 Rice 9.949 1.129 6.089

From the amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus and pota.s.sium applied annually to the cultivated fields of j.a.pan and from the data in these two tables it may be readily seen that these people are now and probably long have been applying quite as much of these three plant food elements to their fields with each planting as are removed with the crop, and if this is true in j.a.pan it must also be true in China. Moreover there is nothing in American agricultural practice which indicates that we shall not ultimately be compelled to do likewise.

X

IN THE SHANTUNG PROVINCE

On May 15th we left Shanghai by one of the coastwise steamers for Tsingtao, some three hundred miles farther north, in the Shantung Province, our object being to keep in touch with methods of tillage and fertilization, corresponding phases of which would occur later in the season there.

The Shantung province is in the lat.i.tude of North Carolina and Kentucky, or lies between that of San Francisco and Los Angeles. It has an area of nearly 56,000 square miles, about that of Wisconsin.

Less than one-half of this area is cultivated land yet it is at the present time supporting a population exceeding 38,000,000 of people.

New York state has today less than ten millions and more than half of these are in New York city.

It was in this province that Confucius was born 2461 years ago, and that Mencius, his disciple, lived. Here, too, seventeen hundred years before Confucius' time, after one of the great floods of the Yellow river, 2297 B. C., and more than 4100 years ago, the Great Yu was appointed "Superintendent of Public Works" and entrusted with draining off the flood waters and ca.n.a.lizing the rivers.

Here also was the beginning of the Boxer uprising. Tsingtao sits at the entrance of Kiaochow Bay. Following the war of j.a.pan with China this was seized by Germany, November 14, 1897, nominally to indemnify for the murder of two German missionaries which had occurred in Shantung, and March 6th, 1898, this bay, to the high water line, its islands and a "Sphere of Influence" extending thirty miles in all directions from the boundary, together with Tsingtao, was leased to Germany for ninety-nine years. Russia demanded and secured a lease of Port Arthur at the same time. Great Britain obtained a similar lease of Weihaiwei in Shantung, while to France Kw.a.n.gchow-wan in southern China, was leased. But the "encroachments"

of European powers did not stop with these leases and during the latter part of 1898 the "Policy of Spheres of Influence" culminated in the international rivalry for railway concessions and mining.

These greatly alarmed China and uprisings broke out very naturally first in Shantung, among the people nearest of kin to the founders of the Empire. As might have been expected of a patriotic, even though naturally peaceful people, they determined to defend their country against such encroachments and the Boxer troubles followed.

Tsingtao has a deep, commodious harbor always free from ice and Germany is constructing here very extensive and substantial harbor improvements which will be of lasting benefit to the province and the Empire. A pier four miles in length encloses the inner wharf, and a second wharf is nearing completion. Germany is also maintaining a meteorological observatory here and has established a large, comprehensive Forest Garden, under excellent management, which is showing remarkable developments for so short a time.

Our steamer entered the harbor during the night and, on going ash.o.r.e, we soon found that only Chinese and German were generally spoken; but through the kind a.s.sistance of Rev. W. H. Scott, of the American Presbyterian Mission, an interpreter promised to call at my hotel in the evening, although he failed to appear. The afternoon was spent at the Forest Garden and on the reforestation tract, which are under the supervision of Mr. Haas. The Forest Garden covers two hundred and seventy acres and the reforestation tract three thousand acres more. In the garden a great variety of forest and fruit trees and small fruits are being tried out with high promise of the most valuable results.

It was in the steep hills about Tsingtao that we first saw at close range serious soil erosion in China; and the returning of forest growth on hills nearly devoid of soil was here remarkable, in view of the long dry seasons which prevail from November to June, and Fig. 118 shows how dest.i.tute of soil the crests of granite hills may become and yet how the coming back of the forest growth may hasten as soon as it is no longer cut away. The rock going into decay, where this view was taken, is an extremely coa.r.s.e crystalline granite, as may be seen in contrast with the watch, and it is falling into decay at a marvelous rate. Disintegration has penetrated the rock far below the surface and the large crystals are held together with but little more tenacity than prevails in a bed of gravel. Moisture and even roots penetrate it deeply and readily and the crystals fall apart with thrusts of the knife blade, the rock crumbling with the greatest freedom. Roadways have been extensively carved along the sides of the hills with the aid of only pick and shovel. Close examination of the rock shows that layers of sediment exist between the crystal faces, either washed down by percolating rain or formed through decomposition of the crystals in place. The next ill.u.s.tration, Fig. 119, shows how large the growth on such soils may be, and in Fig. 120 the vegetation and forest growth are seen coming back, closely covering just such soil surfaces and rock structure as are indicated in Figs. 118 and 119.

These views are taken on the reforestation tract at Tsingtao but most of the growth is volunteer, standing now protected by the German government in their effort to see what may be possible under careful supervision.

The loads of pine bough fuel represented in Fig. 80 were gathered from such hills and from such forest growth as are here represented, but on lands more distant from the city. But Tsingtao, with its forty thousand Chinese, and Kiaochow across the bay, with its one hundred and twenty thousand more, and other villages dotting the narrow plains, maintain a very great demand for such growth on the hill lands. The wonder is that forest growth has persisted at all and has contributed so much in the way of fuel.

Growing in the Forest Garden was a most beautiful wild yellow rose, native to Shantung, being used for landscape effect in the parking, and it ought to be widely introduced into other countries wherever it will thrive. It was growing as heavy borders and ma.s.sive clumps six to eight feet high, giving a most wonderful effect, with its brilliant, dense cloud of the richest yellow bloom. The blossoms are single, fully as large as the Rosa rugosa, with the tips of the petals shading into the most dainty light straw yellow, while the center is a deep orange, the contrast being sufficient to show in the photograph from which Fig. 121 was prepared. Another beautiful and striking feature of this rose is the cl.u.s.tering of the blossoms in one-sided wreath-like sprays, sometimes twelve to eighteen inches long, the flowers standing close enough to even overlap.

The interpreter engaged for us failed to appear as per agreement so the next morning we took the early train for Tsinan to obtain a general view of the country and to note the places most favorable as points for field study. We had resolved also to make an effort to secure an interpreter through the American Presbyterian College at Tsinan. Leaving Tsingtao, the train skirts around the Kiaochow bay for a distance of nearly fifty miles, where we pa.s.s the city of the same name with its population of 120,000, which had an import and export trade in 1905 valued at over $24,000,000. At Sochen we pa.s.sed through a coal mining district where coal was being brought to the cars in baskets carried by men. The coal on the loaded open cars was sprinkled with whitewash, serving as a seal to safe-guard against stealing during transit, making it so that none could be removed without the fact being revealed by breaking the seal. This practice is general in China and is applied to many commodities handled in bulk. We saw baskets of milled rice carried by coolies sealed with a pattern laid over the surface by sprinkling some colored powder upon it. Cut stone, corded for the market, was whitewashed in the same manner as the coal.

As we were approaching Weihsien, another city of 100,000 people, we identified one of the deeply depressed, centuries-old roadways, worn eight to ten feet deep, by chancing to see half a dozen teams pa.s.sing along it as the train crossed. We had pa.s.sed several and were puzzling to account for such peculiar erosion. The teams gave the explanation and thus connected our earlier reading with the concrete. Along these deep-cut roadways caravans may pa.s.s, winding through the fields, entirely un.o.bserved unless one chances to be close along the line or the movement is discovered by clouds of dust, one of the methods that has produced them, and we would not be surprised if gathering manure from them has played a large part also.

Weihsien is near one of the great commercial highways of China and in the center of one of the coal mining regions of the province.

Still further along towards Tsinan we pa.s.sed Tsingchowfu, another of the large cities of the province, with 150,000 population. All day we rode through fields of wheat, always planted in rows, and in hills in the row east of Kaumi, but in single or double continuous drills westward from here to Tsinan. Thousands of wells used for irrigation, of the type seen in Fig. 123, were pa.s.sed during the day, many of them recently dug to supply water for the barley suffering from the severe drought which was threatening the crop at the time.

It was 6:30 P. M. before our train pulled into the station at Tsinan; 7:30 when we had finished supper and engaged a ricksha to take us to the American Presbyterian College in quest of an interpreter. We could not speak Chinese, the ricksha boy could neither speak nor understand a word of English, but the hotel proprietor had instructed him where to go. We plunged into the narrow streets of a great Chinese city, the boy running wherever he could, walking where he must on account of the density of the crowds or the roughness of the stone paving. We had turned many corners, crossed bridges and pa.s.sed through tunneled archways in sections of the ma.s.sive city walls, until it was getting dusk and the ricksha man purchased and lighted a lantern. We were to reach the college in thirty minutes but had been out a full hour. A little later the boy drew up to and held conference with a policeman. The curious of the street gathered about and it dawned upon us that we were lost in the night in the narrow streets of a Chinese city of a hundred thousand people. To go further would be useless for the gates of the mission compound would be locked. We could only indicate by motions our desire to return, but these were not understood. On the train a thoughtful, kindly old German had recognized a stranger in a foreign land and volunteered useful information, cutting from his daily paper an advertis.e.m.e.nt describing a good hotel. This gave the name of the hotel in German, English and in Chinese characters. We handed this to the policeman, pointing to the name of the hotel, indicating by motions the desire to return, but apparently he was unable to read in either language and seemed to think we were a.s.suming to direct the way to the college. A man and boy in the crowd apparently volunteered to act as escort for us. The throng parted and we left them, turned more corners into more unlighted narrow alleyways, one of which was too difficult to permit us to ride. The escorts, if such they were, finally left us, but the dark alley led on until it terminated at the blank face, probably of some other portion of the ma.s.sive city wall we had thrice threaded through lighted tunnels.

Here the ricksha boy stopped and turned about but the light from his lantern was too feeble to permit reading the workings of his mind through his face, and our tongues were both utterly useless in this emergency, so we motioned for him to turn back and by some route we reached the hotel at 11 P. M.

We abandoned the effort to visit the college, for the purpose of securing an interpreter, and took the early train back to Tsingtao, reaching there in time to secure the very satisfactory service of Mr. Chu Wei Yung, through the further kind offices of Mr. Scott. We had been twice over the road between the two cities, obtaining a general idea of the country and of the crops and field operations at this season. The next morning we took an early train to Tsangkau and were ready to walk through the fields and to talk with the last generations of more than forty unbroken centuries of farmers who, with brain and brawn, have successfully and continuously sustained large families on small areas without impoverishing their soil. The next ill.u.s.tration is from a photograph taken in one of these fields.

We astonished the old farmer by asking the privilege of holding his plow through one round in his little field, but he granted the privilege readily. Our furrow was not as well turned as his, nor as well as we could have done with a two-handled Oliver or John Deere, but it was better than the old man had expected and won his respect.

This plow had a good steel point, as a separate, blunt, V-shaped piece, and a moldboard of cast steel with a good twist which turned the soil well. The standard and sole were of wood and at the end of the beam was a block for gauging the depth of furrow. The cost of this plow, to the farmer, was $2.15, gold, and when the day's work is done it is taken home on the shoulders, even though the distance may be a mile or more, and carefully housed. Chinese history states that the plow was invented by Shennung, who lived 2737-2697 B. C.

and "taught the art of agriculture and the medical use of herbs". He is honored as the "G.o.d of Agriculture and Medicine."

Through my interpreter we learned that there were twelve in this man's family, which he maintained on fifteen mow of land, or 2.5 acres, together with his team, consisting of a cow and small donkey, besides feeding two pigs. This is at the rate of 192 people, 16 cows, 16 donkeys and 32 pigs on a forty-acre farm; and of a population density equivalent to 3072 people, 256 cows, 256 donkeys and 512 swine per square mile of cultivated field.

On another small holding we talked with the farmer standing at the well in Fig. 27, where he was irrigating a little piece of barley 30 feet wide and 138 feet long. He owned and was cultivating but one and two-thirds acres of land and yet there were ten in his family and he kept one donkey and usually one pig. Here is a maintenance capacity at the rate of 240 people, 24 donkeys and 24 pigs on a forty-acre farm; and a population density of 3840 people, 384 donkeys and 384 pigs per square mile. His usual annual sales in good seasons were equivalent in value to $73, gold.

In both of these cases the crops grown were wheat, barley, large and small millet, sweet potatoes and soy beans or peanuts. Much straw braid is manufactured in the province by the women and children in their homes, and the cargo of the steamer on which we returned to Shanghai consisted almost entirely of sh.e.l.led peanuts in gunny sacks and huge bales of straw braid destined for the manufacture of hats in Europe and America.

Shantung has only moderate rainfall, little more than 24 inches annually, and this fact has played an important part in determining the agricultural practices of these very old people. In Fig. 123 is a closer view than Fig. 27 of the farmer watering his little field of barley. The well had just been dug over eight feet deep, expressly and solely to water this one piece of grain once, after which it would be filled and the ground planted.