adjoining or intervening plots, which differed from these only by having been treated with $2.50 worth of phosphorus, in 200 pounds of steamed bone meal per acre per annum, during the past ten years, produced fifty-eight, sixty, fifty-four, and sixty bushels, respectively, of wheat per acre.

But on the peaty swamp soil of Kankakee County, with the same amount of phosphorus applied to several plots, the acre-yields of corn in 1903 were seven, four, five, and four bushels, respectively, on four separate plots, while on four other plots, which differed from these only by the addition of potassium, the yields were seventy-two, seventy-one, seventy-three, and sixty-seven bushels of corn per acre the same season.

Again, on the sand land in Tazewell County, Ill., four plots, including some treated with phosphorus and potassium, both singly and combined, produced eighteen, ten, eight, and eighteen bushels of corn per acre in 1906, while four other plots whose treatment differed from these only by the addition of nitrogen, produced the same season sixty-three, seventy-one, seventy-five, and sixty-six bushels per acre.

It is truly gratifying to acknowledge that the State of Illinois is now devoting $100,000 per annum to soil and crop investigations and the dissemination of the information secured, even though this is less than one per cent of the revenue of the state, all of which come directly or indirectly from the soil. It is also gratifying to acknowledge that, according to the crop statistics reported by the Federal Government and confirmed by the independent crop statistics of the Illinois State Board of Agriculture, the last ten-year average yield of corn for the State of Illinois is six bushels higher than during the twenty-five years before the agricultural experiment station began to exert an influence upon our agricultural practice, and also that a similar comparison shows three bushels increase per acre in the Illinois wheat crop-increases whose aggregate value for the state now exceeds twenty million dollars a year; and yet I must confess to you that as an average the farm lands of Illinois are yielding only half crop; that by soil enrichment alone the average crop yields of Illinois could be doubled even with the same seed as we now plant, with the same amount and methods of cultivation and with our normal climatic conditions.

On one of our old experiment fields on the University of Illinois farm the latest three-year average yield of corn grown every year upon the same land is twenty-seven bushels, while in a crop rotation of corn, oats and clover the average corn yield for the same three years has been forty-nine bushels, and where proper soil enrichment is practiced in the same rotation the average yield of corn has been eighty-seven bushels per acre-all grown from the same seed, on the same kind of land, plowed and cultivated the same, warmed by the same sunshine and watered by the same rains.

All these are examples not of theory, but of fact-examples of fact. which should be known and emphasized by all influential men and or

ganizations. We talk of conservation, but 90 per cent of all the talk during the last five years about the conservation of natural resources has been directed toward 10 per cent of the resources. On the other hand, to improve and to save the soils of America will require more than talk. Thought and action are required, and the time for thought and action is already upon us. Not conservation of soil fertility; but amelioration of good soils, restoration of worn-out soils, and then permanent preservation of all soils.

WHAT REAL RECLAMATION MEANS.

Our reclamation of land must be more than the continued exploitation of so-called dry farming and irrigation on virgin soils and the drainage of virgin swamp lands; we must reclaim, in the truest sense of the word, the millions of acres of depleted and agriculturally abandoned lands lying at the door of our greatest markets and already favored with an abundant supply of unused water in the normal rainfall of our older

states.

If 145 million dollars of federal funds can be wisely and profitably expended (and I believe they can) in providing irrigation for three million acres in the arid regions of the Far West, and if 300 million dollars. can be expended annually to support our army and navy, as we are doing even in time of peace, then what should we do in comparison for the restoration or improvement of the 900 million acres of farm lands in this country? I would affirm and emphasize the fact that 145 million dollars. if wisely and economically used, would make a soil survey of every farm in the United States and furnish every farmer with definite and much needed information concerning the composition or invoice of fertility of every type of soil on his farm and proof of practical profitable methods for its improvement, and still leave an endowment whose income would support a permanent experiment field or demonstration farm in every county in every state.

Private enterprise has already put twelve million acres under irrigation in the United States, and the Federal Government has added one million and has projects concerning two million more. This is doubtless all good work and ought to go on, but the fact still remains that as a nation we are penny-wise and pound-foolish, with millions of acres of agriculturally abandoned lands in states surrounding the national capital.

The rapid investigation of the soils of every state should be inaugurated, and this should be accompanied by the wide dissemination of information by demonstration farms showing by actual field trial the most. practical methods of soil improvement and preservation. This is local work and is best done by the state institutions directly responsible to their home people, while the Federal Government must direct and control the reclamation work on the federal lands. Because the revenue of the Federal Government is ten times the total or combined revenue of all the

states, the federal appropriations to the state agricultural institutions should be largely increased for the specific purpose of increasing and extending the knowledge of practical methods for restoring and improving the fertility of the soil, and these increased appropriations might well be made in direct proportion to the acreage of farm lands in the respective

states.

All public schools should offer practical scientific instruction in the principles of soil fertility, and every man and woman of mental power should acquire information and exert influence toward saving the soil, which is second in importance only to saving the soul. But the fact is that not one American in a hundred knows what the soils contain or what the crops require. They know of the rivers of Asia and of all the kings of England, and perhaps of the wars of Caesar and the orations of Cicero; but they do not know what is required to produce a grain of wheat or a kernel of corn. And yet there is as much of culture and more of use and value and of satisfaction in a study of clover roots and plant-food compounds than in Greek roots and Latin compounds; and I insist that the study of soil fertility is so simple and easy and so interesting that any man or woman of ordinary education can become master of the essential principles by studying the subject an hour a day for a single month.

President WHITE-Mr. Wallace will introduce Mr. F. D. Coburn, secretary of the Kansas Board of Agriculture, who will preside this afternoon.

Mr. WALLACE—You people in Kansas have all heard of Coburn (applause), the man who adorns, advises, and advertises the State of Kansas and the state of the West. Mr. Coburn will preside with you this afternoon. (Applause)

Mr. COBURN-President Wallace. I thank you for your kindy introduction. Ladies and gentlemen of the Congress, and delegates: Your temporary chairman will base his claims to your charitable consideration this afternoon on the fact that he has no speech to make, and further will go on the assumption that the program which is provided him and for you will be carried out. I thank you. (Applause)

President WHITE-Ladies and gentlemen: The Missouri delegation is requested to meet immediately after adjournment. We will now listen to Dr. W J McGee, the well-known authority on soils, of the U. S. Department of Agriculture. (Applause)

DR. MCGEE-The relation of man to the earth on which he lives forms a worthy theme for those who think and base action on thought. As it is now, so it has been in every age; every early people had a creation epic; the noblest of all recounts that out of the dust of the earth God made man in His own image. The ancients gave chief thought to beginnings seen vaguely at the best; moderns to current processes which may be seen

clearly and verified by repeated observation. In this way natural science arose; and under the guidance of Darwin naturalists learned that living organisms are controlled and perpetuated chiefly by the two factors of heredity and environment. Into this scheme of nature man entered, and through mental power gradually assumed control over lower nature; for man differs from other organisms in that he adjusts himself to his surroundings largely by reconstructing them. While still retaining heredity as a vital factor like lower living things, man is essentially an environment-shaping organism, and lives by doing. The factors of his existence are heredity and exercise, and it is his rôle in nature to reconstruct the face of the earth, to modify all other living things for the welfare of his kind, and finally, by growing knowledge, to progressively improve his own kind and ennoble humanity.

The conservation movement marks a step in human advancement; for it is a conscious and purposeful entering into control over nature, through the natural resources, for the direct benefit of mankind. In truth it means a revolution (arising, like all other beneficent revolutions, in clear thinking) against an old order of things, preparatory to the framing of principles on which a new order may arise; and in essence it reaches those fundamental relations between man and earth which have stirred deep thought and inspired high motives during all the generations of men. Conservation is no passing caprice, no fantastic whim of a day; the idea expressed by the term runs back to the mainsprings of human existence and of righteousness, and it is in no way surprising that it has already spread from sea to sea and found lodgment in millions of minds-albeit still as seed rather than in the full bloom and rich fruitage destined to follow as question grows into conviction and conviction into action.

THE PRESTIGE OF THE TREE.

As a vital factor in our national life, conservation began with forests used and destroyed several times faster than they grew. Now a tree is a noble object, a sacred thing; "the groves were God's first temples"; the apple is the theme of earliest legend, and the vine and fig tree are emblems of domestic peace; the oak is the symbol of strength and the pine of perpetuity; the memories and affections of the happily born cluster about the old homestead trees under which their happiest hours were spent. And so the material argument for conserving forests was supported by deep-lying sentiment-and what obstacle can long resist the united assaults of profit and sentiment? Then as growing knowledge showed that the woods conserve the waters the force favorable to forests was further increased. At the critical time the prophet of the forest arose in Gifford Pinchot, and the gospel of conserving nature's good for the Nation's strength took form.

Even before the public conscience was awakened to the woodland

waste the farm lands available for homesteads were nearly gone out of public possession, and a plan to eke out the supply by irrigating arid districts was framed by John Wesley Powell, soldier and scientist, whose grasp of the relations between man and earth was stronger than any other of his generation. His plan was extended and carried out by Frederick Haynes Newell, engineer and builder, one of the live leaders of the conservation movement. Thus Powell planted and Newell watered, and the wilderness blossomed; and the aspiration for an independent home-owning citizenry which shaped the Nation in its infancy, and then fell into neglect, was revived. The Reclamation Service virtually extended the habitable and productive area of the country; but its best gift was a re-awakened desire for homes on the land, a re-kindling of that home sense which is the mate of patriotism and handmaid of conservation.

Through genius fostered by stress of pioneering, this became a country of invention; and through plentitude of coal and wood and iron, manufacturing grew as never before, until the riches of one after another of the forests and coal fields and ore beds were exhausted. Meantime the contact of free citizens with nature-the common touch of man and earth-made this a country of science, and scientific surveys measured the mineral resources used and remaining for use. More than any other, Joseph Austin Holmes came up as the apostle of better things in economical exploitation and in the saving of human life in mine and factory, and the last of these stirred deeper sympathy and evoked wider appreciation than could the merely material considerations untouched by humane sentiment.

THE ROOSEVELT POLICY.

Though moved directly by desire for better use of the rivers, it was on these three pillars-forests, lands, minerals-that the original structure of conservation was founded by Theodore Roosevelt, humanitarian and statesman, no less than president. Yet-"lest we forget"-it cannot be too strongly emphasized that while the argument for conservation was and is statable in terms of board feet and acres and tons and dollars, the strength of the movement lies in the human feeling behind the material units in love of trees, in love of home, in love of country, in love of family and fellow men. In truth, the material argument merely justifies and gives formal warrant for the sentimental outgrowth born of increasing intelligence coupled with increasing interdependence between man and earth-for even like Anteus of old, modern men gain new life by contact with earth.

Largely after the conservation movement was under way came the realization that the water of the country is the primary resource, since on it depends that productivity without which the lands would be uninhabitable, the forests non-existent, and the minerals merely so much inert and worthless matter. Now, the material basis for appreciation of water