Farmers of Forty Centuries

Farmers of Forty Centuries

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Title: Farmers of Forty Centuries or, Permanent Agriculture in China,
Korea and Japan
Author: F. H. King
Release Date: March, 2004 [EBook #5350] [Yes, we are more than one
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FARMERS OF FORTY CENTURIES
OR
PERMANENT AGRICULTURE IN CHINA, KOREA AND JAPAN
By
F. H. KING, D. Sc.
1911

PREFACE

By DR. L. H. BAILEY.
We have not yet gathered up the experience of mankind in the tilling of
the earth; yet the tilling of the earth is the bottom condition of
civilization. If we are to assemble all the forces and agencies that make
for the final conquest of the planet, we must assuredly know how it is
that all the peoples in all the places have met the problem of producing
their sustenance out of the soil.
We have had few great agricultural travelers and few books that
describe the real and significant rural conditions. Of natural history
travel we have had very much; and of accounts of sights and events
perhaps we have had too many. There are, to be sure, famous books of
study and travel in rural regions, and some of them, as Arthur Young's
"Travels in France," have touched social and political history; but for
the most part, authorship of agricultural travel is yet undeveloped. The
spirit of scientific inquiry must now be taken into this field, and all
earth-conquest must be compared and the results be given to the people
that work.
This was the point of view in which I read Professor King's manuscript.
It is the writing of a well-trained observer who went forth not to find

diversion or to depict scenery and common wonders, but to study the
actual conditions of life of agricultural peoples. We in North America
are wont to think that we may instruct all the world in agriculture,
because our agricultural wealth is great and our exports to less favored
peoples have been heavy; but this wealth is great because our soil is
fertile and new, and in large acreage for every person. We have really
only begun to farm well. The first condition of farming is to maintain
fertility. This condition the oriental peoples have met, and they have
solved it in their way. We may never adopt particular methods, but we
can profit vastly by their experience. With the increase of personal
wants in recent time. the newer countries may never reach such density
of population as have Japan and China; but we must nevertheless learn
the first lesson in the conservation of natural resources, which are the
resources of the land. This is the message that Professor King brought
home from the East.
This book on agriculture should have good effect in establishing
understanding between the West and the East. If there could be such an
interchange of courtesies and inquiries on these themes as is suggested
by Professor King, as well as the interchange of athletics and
diplomacy and commerce, the common productive people on both sides
should gain much that they could use; and the results in amity should
be incalculable.
It is a misfortune that Professor King could not have lived to write the
concluding "Message of China and Japan to the World." It would have
been a careful and forceful summary of his study of eastern conditions.
At the moment when the work was going to the printer, he was called
suddenly to the endless journey and his travel here was left incomplete.
But he bequeathed us a new piece of literature, to add to his standard
writings on soils and on