The Story of the Soil Part 30

I am sorry that the nitrogen content of the soil was not determined, or at least not published in the bulletin. There can be no doubt, however, that your soil is extremely deficient in organic matter and nitrogen, and you will understand that liberal use should be made of legume crops. The known nitrogen content of legumes and other crops will be a help to you in planning your crop rotation and the disposition of the crops grown.

As to phosphorus, it is safe to say that in the long run fine-ground rock phosphate will prove the best investment; but for a few years it might be best to make some use of acid phosphate in addition to the raw rock, at least until you are ready to begin turning under more organic matter with the phosphate.

There is only one other suggestion: If you wish to make a start toward better crops as soon as possible, you may well use some kainit,--say six hundred pounds per acre every four or five years, preferably applied with the phosphate. In the absence of decaying organic matter, the pota.s.sium of the soil becomes available very slowly. The kainit furnishes both pota.s.sium and magnesium in soluble form and it also contains sulfur and chlorin. As soon as you can provide plenty of decaying organic matter you will probably discontinue the use of both kainit and acid phosphate. If you sell only grains and animal products, the amount of pota.s.sium sold from the farm is very small compared with your supply of that element, which would be sufficient for one hundred bushels of corn per acre for seven hundred years.

I have some doubt if it will be worth the expense involved to have the samples of subsurface and subsoil a.n.a.lyzed at this time; but you might save them for future use if desired.

I shall always appreciate the kindness shown me by being permitted to enjoy your hospitality and to profit from the information you were so able to give me concerning the history and general character of your lands.

My mother asks to have her kind regards extended to you and yours.

Very sincerely yours,

PERCY JOHNSTON.

WESTOVER, January 2, 1904. Percy Johnston, Esq., Winterbine, Ill.

MY DEAR FRIEND:--We were all pleased to receive your letter informing us of your safe journey back to Illinois. I had hoped that you might find a piece of land here in the East which would suit you; but I am not surprised that you and your mother should prefer to remain in Illinois, because of your former a.s.sociations and your better knowledge of the Western conditions. Northern men who come South often have serious difficulty to manage our negro labor.

I am surprised, however, that you were able to purchase, even in Southern Illinois, such prairie land as you describe for the price of $18 per acre. I supposed $190 an acre for your corn belt farm was a good price, although it is commonly reported to us that Illinois land is selling for $150 to $200 an acre.

Now, in regard to correspondence with Adelaide, let me say that we could have no objection whatever, except that it might be misunderstood, more especially, of course, by Professor Barstow. I do not think I mentioned it to you, but the fact is that the Professor and Adelaide are essentially betrothed. I do not know that the final details are perfected, but doubtless they are, for they have been much together during the Christmas weeks. The Barstows, as you probably know, are still among the most prominent people of North Carolina. Adelaide is young yet and we respect her reticence, but her mother and I have both given our consent and Professor Barstow has every reason to be satisfied with the reception he invariably receives from Adelaide.

I only mention this matter to you that you may understand why misunderstanding might arise in case of such correspondence as you suggest, even though, as Adelaide has explained, she has very naturally become interested temporarily in some of the economic and social questions relating to agriculture, and would unquestionably read your letters concerning these state and national problems with continued interest. I shall hope, however, that she may still have that satisfaction, for I am very deeply interested in all such questions, and I am particularly interested to know more of the details of your southern Illinois farm, including the invoice of the soil, which you say has been taken by your Experiment Station, and especially your definite plans for the improvement of the land. I hope the name you have chosen for your farm is not so appropriate as it would be for some of our old Virginia farms.

I shall also be under renewed obligation to you if I may occasionally submit questions concerning the best plans for the restoration of Westover to its former productiveness. I have decided at least to make another trial with alfalfa next summer, following the valuable suggestions you gave me.

In closing let me renew my a.s.surance of our deep grat.i.tude for the special service you so n.o.bly rendered when fiendish danger threatened my daughter. We shall always regard you as a gentleman of the highest type. Very respectfully yours,

CHARLES WEST.

Percy read this letter hurriedly to the end, and then slowly reread it. His mother noticed that he absent-mindedly replaced the letter in the envelope instead of reading it to her as was his custom.

However, he laid the letter by her plate and talked with her about the corn-sh.e.l.ling which was to begin as soon as the corn sh.e.l.ler could be brought from the neighbor's where Percy had been helping to haul the corn from the sh.e.l.ler to elevator at Winterbine. Dinner finished, he hurried out to complete the preparations for the afternoon's work. We have no right to follow him. His mother only saw that he went to the little granary where a few loads of corn were to be stored for future use. Yes, she saw that he closed the door as he entered. Not even his mother could see her son again a child. Women and children weep, not men. The heart strings draw tight and tighter until they tear or snap. The body is racked with the anguish of the mind. The form reels and sinks to the floor. The head bows low. Pent up tears fall like rain.--No, that cannot be.

Men do not shed tears. If they are mental cowards and physical brutes they pa.s.s from hence by a short and easy route and leave the burdens of life to their wives and mothers and disgraced families.

If they are Christian men they seek the only source of help.

Mrs. Johnston watched and waited--it seemed an hour, but was only a quarter of that time till the granary door opened and she saw Percy pa.s.s to the barn with a step which satisfied her mother's eye.

She drew out the letter, and from a life habit of making sure, pressed the envelope to see that it contained nothing more. She noted a slip of crumpled paper and drew it out. Upon it was written in a penciled scrawl:

_"Her grandma has not consented."_

She read the letter, stood for a moment as in meditation, then replaced the slip and letter in the envelope, and laid it on Percy's desk. The letter was plainly a man's handwriting. The envelope was addressed in a bold hand that was clearly not Mr. West's writing.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

PLANNING FOR LIFE

HEART-OF-EGYPT, ILLINOIS, June 16, 1904.

Mr. Charles West,

Blue Mound, Va.

MY DEAR SIR:--I have delayed writing to you in regard to the plans for Poorland Farm, until I could feel that we are able at least to make an outline of tentative nature. The labor problem of a farm of three hundred and twenty acres is of course very different from that on forty acres, and we are not yet fully decided regarding our crop rotation and the disposition of the crops produced (or hoped for). I realize that to rebuild in my life what another has torn down during his life is a task the end of which can hardly be even dimly foreshadowed. Some friends are already beginning to ask me what results I am getting, and they apparently feel that we must succeed or fail with a trial of a full season. I have said to them that I have no objection whatever to discussing our plans at any time, so far as we are yet able to make plans, but that I shall not be ready to discuss results with anyone until we begin to secure crop yields in the third rotation. This means that I am not expecting the benefits of a six-year rotation of crops before the rotation has been actually practiced. You will understand of course that, if all your land had been cropped with little or no change, for all its history, you would require six or eight years' time before you would be able to grow a crop of corn on land that had been pastured for six or eight years; but some people seem to take it for granted that one can adopt a six-year rotation and enjoy the full benefits of it the first season.

I remember that you were surprised that I could buy a level upland farm even in this part of Illinois for $18 an acre; but you will probably be more surprised to learn that this farm had not paid the previous owners two per cent. interest on $18 an acre as an average of the last five years. In fact, sixty acres of it had grown no crops for the last five years. It was largely managed by tenants on the basis of share rent, and because of this I have been able to secure the records of several years.

I at least had some satisfaction in purchasing this farm, for the real estate men were left without a single "talking point." I insisted that I wanted the poorest prairie farm in "Egypt," and whenever they began to tell me that the soil on a certain farm was really above the average, or that the land had been well cared for until recently, or that it had been fertilized a good deal, etc., I at once informed them that any advantage of that sort completely disqualified any farm for me; and that they need not talk to me about any farms except those that represented the poorest and most abused in Southern Illinois.

I may say, however, that $20 an acre is about the average price of the average land. I had an option on a three hundred and sixty acre farm cornering the corporation limits of the County Seat for $30 an acre, and all agreed that the farm was above the average in quality.

Heart-of-Egypt is a small station on the double track of the Chicago-New Orleans line of the Illinois Central, and there are three other railroads pa.s.sing through our County Seat. Poorland Farm is less than two miles from Heart-of-Egypt and only five miles from the County Seat, with level roads to both.

As to the soil, I may say that in some respects it is poorer than yours, but in others not so poor. The amount of plant food contained in six and two-thirds inches of the surface soil of an acre, representing two million pounds of soil, are as follows:

2,880 pounds of nitrogen

840 pounds of phosphorus

24,940 pounds of pota.s.sium

6,740 pounds of magnesium

14,660 pounds of calcium

By referring to the invoice of your most common land, you will see that Westover is richer in phosphorus, in magnesium, and in calcium, than Poorland Farm. But, while your soil contains a half more of that rare element phosphorus, ours contains a half more of the abundant element pota.s.sium. In the supply of nitrogen we have a distinct advantage, because our soil contains nearly three times as much as your most common cultivated land, and even twice as much as your level upland soil, which you consider too poor for farming, but in which phosphorus and not nitrogen must be the first limiting element, the same as with ours.

The fact is that the nitrogen problem in the East was one of the reasons why we have chosen to locate in Southern Illinois. I am confident that the level lands I saw about Blairville and over in Maryland are more deficient in organic matter and nitrogen than your uncultivated level upland, and probably even more deficient than your common gently sloping cultivated lands, because of your long rotation with much opportunity for nitrogen fixation by such legumes will grow in your meadows and pastures, including the red clover which you regularly sow, the white clover, which is very persistent, and the j.a.pan clover, which it seems to me has really benefited you more than the others.

To me a difference in nitrogen content of two thousand pounds per acre signifies a good deal. It plainly signifies a hundred years' of "working the soil for all that's in it," beyond what has yet been done to our "Egypt." The cost of two thousand pounds of nitrogen in sodium nitrate would be at least $300 and even that would not include the organic matter, which has value for its own sake because of the power of its decomposition products to liberate the mineral elements from the soil, as witness the most common upland soils of St. Mary county, Maryland, with a phosphorus content reduced to one hundred and sixty pounds per acre in two million pounds of the ignited soil. The ten-inch plows of Maryland, the twelve-inch of Southern Illinois, the fourteen-inch of the corn belt, and the sixteen-inch of the newer regions of the Northwest, signify something as to the influence of organic matter upon the horsepower required in tillage; and the organic matter also has a value because it increases the power of the soil to absorb and retain moisture and to resist surface was.h.i.+ng and "running together" to form the hard surface crust.

To think of applying two thousand pounds of nitrogen by plowing under two hundred tons of manure or forty tons of clover per acre at least requires a "big think," as my Swede man would say.

Of course, with our western life and cosmopolitan population, where "a man's a man for a' that," mother feels that it would not be easy for us to fit into your somewhat distinctly stratified society. We would not be "colored" if we could, and perhaps we could not be aristocratic if we would; and the opportunity to become, or, perhaps I should say, to remain, "poor white trash," though wide open, is not very alluring. I realize, of course, that there are some whole-souled people like the West's and Thornton's, but I also found some of the tribe of Jones, and I have much doubt as to the social standing of one who would feel obliged to demonstrate that he could spread more manure in a day than his hired n.i.g.g.e.r.

My Swede and I are like brothers; we clean stables together and talk politics, science, and agriculture. In fact he is as much interested as I am in the building up of Poorland Farm, and has already contributed some very practical suggestions. I pay him moderate wages and a small percentage of the farm receipts after deducting certain expenses which he can help to keep as low as possible, such as for labor, repairs, and purchase of feed and new tools, but without deducting the taxes or interest on investment or the cost of any permanent improvements, such as the expense for limestone, phosphate, new fences and buildings, and breeding stock.

Referring again to the invoice of the soil, I may say that the percentage of the mineral plant foods increases with depth, the same as in your soil, but not to such an extent, and with one exception.