Checking the Waste | Page 4

that nature has given
us and develop our country to the highest possible point, how we may
rise far above our present level in comfort, convenience, and abundance,
and yet do all these things with much less waste than we now permit.
CHAPTER II
THE SOIL
The soil is the greatest of our natural resources. We may almost say
that it is greater than all the others combined, for from it comes all of
our food; a large part of it directly as plants which grow in the soil and
which we eat in the form of roots, leaves, grains, berries, fruits, and
nuts; and a part of it indirectly as animals, which have received their
food supply from the plants.
But this is not all. The soil supplies almost every known need. We
build our homes from the trees of the forest; combined with the iron
that comes from the soil they furnish our fuel, our ships, our cars, our
furniture, and countless other things. Our clothing is made from the
cotton or flax which grows from the soil, the wool from the sheep that

feed on the pastures, or from the silk-worms that feed on leaves.
So it is to the earth that we turn for every need, and Mother Nature
supplies it. But it is of the soil as it gives us our food supply that we
shall speak in this chapter, and we must first learn the nature of the soil,
and the process of its making, in order to understand the need of
extraordinary care in its management, and also how to use it so that it
will not wear out, or become exhausted, but will increase in value for
years and even centuries, as it will if properly cared for.
The earth's surface is constantly being renewed. Although the great
formative movements occurred ages ago, yet earthquakes, volcanic
action, wind, frost and water are working continual changes. Hills and
mountains have been thrown up, and nature has gone to work at once to
shave down the mountains and fill up the valleys. The whole earth is as
carefully adjusted and balanced as the wheels of a watch, but these
adjustments take place in long periods of time. In a lifetime, or even a
century, the changes of the earth's surface seem few and small, but they
are none the less sure.
The soil or humus, that is, the upper layer of the earth's crust which is
used in farming, has an average depth of about four feet, and has been
formed by decay, first and most important of all by rock decay which is
constantly going on under the surface of the earth and in exposed
places everywhere, and is caused by the action of air and water. This
process is very slow. In places where the rock is already partly ground
up, or, disintegrated, as we sometimes say, it is more rapid, but the
average growth of the soil from beneath by rock decay is scarcely more
than a foot in ten thousand years.
Some waste of this upper layer is constantly taking place from above,
caused by wind and floods, and considerable additions are made to it
by the decay of animal and vegetable matter, but in order to keep the
soil at its best, the average soil waste should not amount to more than
an inch every thousand years.
When this humus is once exhausted there is no way to repair the
damage but to wait for the slow rock-decay. In the river valleys there is

no immediate danger of exhausting the entire body of the soil, but on
the hills and in the higher regions the soil-depth is very much less than
four feet, and the danger of waste much more serious. There are parts
of the earth that were once almost as fertile as ours where great cities
once stood, but where now nothing is left but the bare rock.
So we know that the end is sure, even for the life of man upon earth,
unless we learn to conserve our soil.
The value of our farm crops can not be overestimated. In food value
they are the life of the nation; in money value, our greatest national
wealth. For the year 1909 the total value of farm products was the
amazing sum of $8,760,000,000. It may give some idea of this vast
amount to say that if we could have it in the form of twenty-dollar gold
pieces, stacked in one pile, the column would reach seven hundred
miles high. If they were laid flat, edge to edge, they would extend from
Alaska to the Panama Canal, with enough left over to reach from New
York to San Francisco. If the money could be distributed, it would give
us