The Challenge of the Country Part 11

_Achievements in Scientific Breeding_

In the earlier pages of this chapter we have already alluded to this fascinating subject as an ill.u.s.tration of modern efficiency in country life. Four years ago a.s.sistant Secretary Hays of the Department of Agriculture a.s.serted that scientific breeding of better stock and plant life was netting this country a billion dollars a year, of the total agricultural production of seven and a half billions in 1907.[22] In 1910 the total reached about nine billions and it is probable that scientific agriculture was the main cause of the great increase rather than additional acreage.

One of the wonders of modern science is this story of the development of new plant species and improvement in the best of the old, by the skillful processes of plant breeding. Notable also has been the improvement in American horses, cattle, swine and poultry, developed by the same scientific principles. Projected efficiency, or breeding power to beget valuable progeny, is the central idea. Simple selection is the method. Out of a large number of animals the phenomenal individual is selected for his notable capacity for reproducing in his offspring his own desirable characteristics. Thus the best blood is multiplied and the less desirable is discarded. Sometimes by close inbreeding the eugenic process has been hastened. In this way scientific stock raisers have been able practically to make to order animals with any desired quality. For instance, the great demand for bacon in England has been met by a masterly bit of agricultural statesmanship, for which Mr. John Dryden, chief of the Canadian Agricultural Department, is responsible. After careful study and experiment, the Yorkshire and Tamworth breeds of hogs were crossed and a special breed developed especially valuable for bacon with exceptionally long sides of uniform thickness and with alternating layers of fat and lean. Selected bacon made to order!

New breeds of sheep have been developed which have combined phenomenal wool-producing power with superior meat production; similarly short-horn cattle with great milk-giving capacity and beef production; and more remarkable still have been the results in horse breeding. In spite of all the motor-cycles and automobiles, the horse is becoming more and more useful, because more highly civilized and specialized. The breeders know how to build up horse-flesh to suit your special needs for draft horse, family horse, trotter or pacer, with any desired form, proportions or talent, almost as accurately as a druggist compounds prescriptions! The wonderful possibilities involved challenge our imagination. Among the results of this stock-raising strategy we ought to expect not only happier and richer farmers, but better and cheaper food and clothing for all cla.s.ses of people. The very fact that the business is now on a scientific basis has appealed to students and is attracting men of large abilities who see the opportunity to better rapidly, year by year, the live-stock quality of the whole country.

_Marvels in Plant Production_

In the field of plant breeding these marvelous results are more rapid and startling because of the wider range of selection. Hybridization, the crossing of different species, has accomplished much more than simple selection. Dr. William Saunders of Canada succeeded in crossing the Ladoga and Fife varieties of wheat and secured a wheat which was earlier than Fife and yielded better than Ladoga. Likewise, Luther Burbank was able to produce a hybrid walnut by crossing the English and Black walnuts; and Webber and Swingle developed the new fruits called tangerines and citranges by crossing sweet oranges with carefully selected specimens of the wild fruit. Experiments last year in blueberry culture developed luscious berries a half inch in diameter. Possibilities in berry development are almost unlimited, especially by crossing with hardy wild varieties.

Peach raisers have two great obstacles to sure success: drought in the Southwest and frost toward the North. Science is helping them to compete successfully with the severities of nature. A hardy wild peach has been found in Northern China and grafting on this stock has produced (this last year) the hardiest peach in Iowa; while another strain bids fair to meet the drought-resisting needs of the Southwest fruit grower.

Our agricultural explorers are searching the world for new varieties which can be used in hybridizing to perfect the American species. For instance, a wild wheat has been found in Palestine which requires very little water. So a specialist in acclimatization was sent directly to the slopes of Mount Hermon to discover its possibilities for American dry farming. If the plant doctors succeed in developing wheat which can be raised in our arid wilderness, it would repay a thousand fold the expense of a round-the-world trip. The possible profits in skillful plant breeding are almost unlimited. Burbank is quoted as a.s.serting: "The right man under favorable conditions can make one dollar yield a million dollars in plant breeding." In 1908 the Minnesota Experiment Station had spent $40,000 in breeding the cereal grains. The agricultural department is authority for the opinion that "the increased production is estimated at a thousand fold, or $40,000,000."[23]

The justly famous navel oranges of California can all be traced to two scions sent from the U. S. Department of Agriculture some years ago. The Wealthy apple, which thrives in the cold north better than any other good variety, goes back to the early struggles of Peter Gideon at Lake Minnetonka, who faced the Minnesota winter almost penniless, coatless and with a family dependent upon him; but had faith enough to invest his hard-earned dollars in selected apple-seed from his far off home in Maine.

The largest single contributor to the wealth produced by scientific breeding is said to be the Burbank potato. The van-guard of American experimenters are ranging the world and bringing home large-fruited jujubes (as good as dates) from the dry fields of Central Asia; seedless Chinese persimmons which have just been successfully fruited in North Carolina; a j.a.panese salad plant and a vegetable called _udo_ which is similar to asparagus; edible roots called _aroids_ which thrive in swampy land where the potato rots; hardy alfalfa from central Asia successfully crossed with our own varieties for our cold northwest; drought-resisting cherries, apricots with sweet kernels, Caucasian peaches, olives hardy in zero temperatures, mangoes from Porto Rico, the Paradise apple which grows wild in the Caucasus, the Slew Abrikose, an apricot as smooth as the nectarine, and wild strawberries fruiting in February on the dry cliffs of western Asia which, through cross-breeding may help to carry our native strawberry many miles still farther to the north.

The story is endless; but these items suggest to us the thoroughly statesmanlike way in which our agricultural leaders are increasing year by year the possibilities of our soil in spite of all drawbacks of condition and climate. No wonder they are already prophesying that our annual agricultural production will before long reach twenty billions. When it comes, a large part of the credit must be given to the skillful agricultural scientists who are furnishing all progressive farmers these newer species of plants and animals which are superseding the inferior varieties.

_Irrigation and the Problem of the Desert_

When it is the problem of sterility, it is hopeless. But usually it is merely the problem of aridity; which is only a challenge to enterprise.

Much of our "Great American Desert," as the old geography used to describe it, is in reality the most fertile of all soils; no wonder it can easily be made to "blossom as the rose."

Dr. W. E. Smythe in his fascinating book "The Conquest of Arid America"

calls attention to the fact that the real dividing line between the east and the west is the 97th meridian which divides in twain the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. East of this line is the region of fairly a.s.sured rainfall. To the westward stretches the vast area of arid land with a rainfall insufficient to sustain agriculture; and with only three or four people to the square mile, though with resources enough to support a hundred million people. With a climate matchless for health and a varied and beautiful scenery, coupled with untold mineral deposits and a soil fertility that is remarkable, this great section is slowly coming to its own, through the method of irrigation, from the mountains and the streams.

With characteristic western spirit the above author remarks, "Even in humid regions nothing is so uncertain as the time and amount of the rainfall. In the whole range of modern industry nothing is so crude, uncalculating and unscientific as the childlike dependence on the mood of the clouds for the moisture essential to the production of the staple necessities of life." The superiority of irrigation as a certain means of water supply which can be regulated at will is a thesis easy to maintain.

The results make a marvelous story. "The ca.n.a.l is an insurance policy against loss of crops by drought, while aridity is a substantial guarantee against injury by flood. The rich soils of the arid region produce from four to ten times as largely with irrigation, as the soil of the humid region without it. Twenty acres in the irrigated West should equal 100 acres elsewhere. Certainty, abundance, variety--all this upon an area so small as to be within the control of a single family through its own area, are the elements which compose industrial independence under irrigation."

The small farm unit, usually from five to twenty-five acres, brings neighbors close together, abolishing loneliness and most of the social ills of farm life in the East. Beautiful irrigated villages are springing up which rival in comfort and privilege most places on earth, and combine both city and country privileges, where rural and urban meet. The spirit of cooperation is strong in irrigated communities, enforced by the common dependence upon the common enterprise and water supply. This is well ill.u.s.trated by the Mormon commonwealth, the pioneer irrigators of the West.

The enthusiastic irrigating farmer a.s.serts that irrigation is "the foundation of truly scientific agriculture." "The western farmer who has learned to irrigate thinks it would be quite as illogical for him to leave the watering of his potato patch to the caprice of the clouds as for the housewife to defer her wash-day until she could catch rainwater in her tubs." Irrigation certainly furnishes the ideal method for raising a varied crop, giving each crop individual treatment, serving each of thirty varieties of plants and trees with just the amount of daily moisture they individually need, so as to produce maximum products. No wonder three crops in a year sometimes result, and sometimes five crops of alfalfa in the Southwest. Here we come to the highest development of intensive farming where the utmost value of agricultural science has free play and rivals the results of research and skill in any other line of human effort.

_Dry Farming Possibilities_

Wonderful as these irrigation projects are, we must not fail to notice that this method of reclaiming arid lands can only be used where there are mountains, rivers or water courses which can be tapped. Ultimately an area as large as New England and New York State will probably be blessed by irrigation. But this is only a small fraction of the arid West. How shall the rest be reclaimed from the desert? Obviously by some method of dry farming, depending on and conserving the meager rain-fall.

A few simple principles have been discovered, and some specialized machinery developed, by which successful dry farming is now conducted on an extensive scale along the arid plains between the Missouri river basin and the Sierra Nevada mountains. In brief these principles are: deep plowing, sub-soil packing, intensive cultivation, maintaining a fine dust mulch on the surface, the use of drought-resisting grains, especially certain varieties of wheat, allowing the land to lie fallow every other year to store moisture, and keeping a good per cent. of humus (vegetable matter) in the soil to resist evaporation. In every possible way the dry farmer conserves moisture. The dry mulch is particularly effective. Only a few years ago it was discovered that by capillary attraction much of the water absorbed by the spongy soil during a rain is lost by rapid evaporation, coming to the surface, just as oil runs up a wick. But by stirring the surface the "capillary ducts" are broken up and the moisture tends to stay down in the sub soil; for the two inches of dust mulch on the surface acts like a blanket, protecting the precious moisture from the dry winds.

III. Some Results of Scientific Farming.

_Agriculture Now a Profession_

In such a brief treatment it is not to be expected that the writer could do justice to the subject of modern agriculture. In fact there has been little reference to the topic of general farming in this chapter. In its main outline it is a familiar topic and requires little attention here.

The descriptions of certain varieties of specialized agriculture have been given as ill.u.s.trations of the more remarkable phases of the application of scientific methods to country life. We hope two results have thus been attained, that the dignity and efficiency and scientific possibilities of modern agriculture as a profession have been brought to the attention both of our readers in the city and of the discontented farm boys in the country. Both need a higher appreciation of country life. It should be evident to all that agriculture to-day is thoroughly scientific when rightly practiced, which is simply saying that the practice of the new agriculture is a _profession_. It is among the most difficult and highly technical of all professions. No profession, with the possible exception of medicine, has a broader scientific basis or is at present deriving a greater benefit from vast inductive work in world-wide experimentation at both public and private expense. This profession has made wonderful gains in recent years in both extensive and intensive efficiency, and has written among its triumphs many of the most romantic stories of modern mechanical skill, inventive genius, economic profit and scientific achievement.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pennsylvania Farm Land.]

This honorable profession is not only worthy of the finest and ablest of our American young manhood, but its opportunity and present need is a distinct challenge to their attention. Mr. James J. Hill recently stated as his opinion that not more than one per cent. of American farmers in the middle West were keeping in touch with the agricultural inst.i.tutions; which is the same as saying they are not keeping up to date. This suggests the need of more intelligent modern farmers tilling the soil as a profession and thus pointing the way to progress for all their neighbors.

_Conservation: A New Appeal to Patriotism_

This word conservation has but recently won its place of honor in our popular speech; but it is a word of mighty import. The battle for conservation of our national resources is on, and it challenges the attention of our young collegians.

It is encouraging to see results already. By a happy combination of progressiveness with true conservatism, we are conserving our national a.s.sets from Niagara to the mighty forests of Washington and California and from the arid lands of the mighty empire of Montana to the swamps of Florida. The nation is repenting of its prodigal wastefulness and is now guarding jealously its forest reserves, its vast water-power privileges, its coal and mineral deposits and its soil fertility, for upon these stores of fundamental wealth depends the prosperity of endless generations. Many alluring chances will come to men now in college to share in this great task of the nation, this fascinating enterprise of conservation.

_Permanency of Rural Christendom Now Possible_

Any reader must be quite lacking in vision who has been able to read this chapter on the remarkable progress of modern agricultural science without discerning the deep religious significance of it all. Civilization unquestionably is based on economics. Rural prosperity is a primary condition of rural permanence. Farming must be profitable enough to maintain a self-respecting rural folk; or the open country would be speedily abandoned to a race of peasants and rural heathenism would be imminent.

Progress in agriculture, developing rural prosperity, means the survival of the best rural homes and the finest rural ideals,--otherwise these would go to the city. Retaining in the country a genuine Christian const.i.tuency and rural leadership means the survival of the country church. The Christian forces in the country have a vast stake in rural prosperity. You cannot hope to build a prosperous country church on poor soil or maintain it on bad farming. This is not a mere matter of scarcity of contributions. It is a result of the poverty of personality among people who are poor Christians because they are poor farmers.

Christian leaders should therefore rejoice in the advance of modern agriculture not only because it all signifies a richer and broader rural prosperity, but also because it makes possible the permanence of rural Christendom and the survival of successful country churches. The more profitable modern farming is made, the richer becomes the opportunity of country life, the larger proportion of the brightest sons and daughters of the farm will resist the lure of the city. Nothing is so vital to the country church, humanly speaking, as to keep in the country parishes a fair share of the country boys and girls of the finest type. With them it lives and serves its community. Without them it will die and its community will become decadent.

It is no selfish Christian spirit that rejoices in the broadening opportunities of country life. The church is but a means to an end. The great objective is the coming of the Kingdom of G.o.d for which Jesus prayed. As fast as the very soil of a country is recognized as "holy land," and preserving its fertility is felt to be a patriotic duty; as fast as better live stock, better plant species and a better breed of men are sought as a working ideal; as fast as the conservation of all natural resources becomes a national life purpose; so rapidly and inevitably the Kingdom of Heaven will come. The Country Life Movement is fundamentally religious.

TEST QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER IV

1.--Mention a few evidences of modern industrial efficiency.

2.--What can you say of the efficiency of modern agriculture?

3.--In what ways have you noticed country people to be especially conservative?

4.--Compare the wasteful farm methods of a half century ago with the careful intensive cultivation of to-day.

5.--How has the government helped progressive agriculture?

6.--What are the experiment stations accomplishing?

7.--What do you think of the evil of soil-piracy?

8.--Mention some of the remarkable achievements of scientific breeding of farm animals.

9.--What should be the results of all this improvement in our live stock?

What stands in the way?

10.--What has especially interested you among the marvels of plant production by cross-cultivation?