better seeding alone your fields will yield you many per cent more than now. In that better tillage of the soil to which I referred, is included more plowing or disking, particularly beginning earlier so as to save the moisture of early spring. A great deal of what is called agriculture is not agriculture; it is simply land-skimming, seeing how many years you can rob your land, ship off and get money for the grain, and put nothing back. If you use your soil as a mine, by and by will come the reckoning. In the Holy Land, all the way from Joppa to Jerusalem, until you get up to the rocks where nothing ever grew, the soil looks good, but it produces almost nothing and will sell for almost nothing. I wonder if the Hebrew capitalists who are helping poor Hebrews to settle there are not mistaken in supposing that that country will ever be the home of a large population? No land anywhere but has a limit to its productivity. Put back something into the soil, or by and by you cannot get anything out of it. There are certain industries that enable you to put back and not be forever taking out. Dairy farming is one of the best of these, because in it you take off the land almost nothing that is good for the land. That industry makes your farm rich not only in your time, but in the time of your children and your children's children. Such a form of agriculture is often quite as profitable as any other, even at the outset, and it is much more so in the end. You eat your cake and have it too. This conservative sort of agriculture we ought to adopt and to encourage in every possible way. Let us use our influence to impart better ideas of culture. Vast improvement is possible and in store. The future of the section is destined to be glorious. So long as time shall last, this grand territory is going to blossom like Paradise, and be the home of a population as magnificent as ever lived. upon our globe. A fourth phase of pioneership appears upon the horizon of the future, that of the organization of country life-social, literary, artistic, educational, religious, eco nomic, the last including co-operation in the purchase of stores and in the marketing of crops. But this coming species of pioneership must be reserved for later treatment. CHAPTER VIII AMALGAMATING OUR FOREIGN BORN UR population of foreign birth is a frequent topic of remark. People dwell on the number of foreigners joining us yearly, on the competition they offer to natives of America, and on the undesirable character of many among them. Most who discuss the subject seem to concern themselves little with foreigners' slow progress after they enter our gates, it being assumed either that foreigners once domiciled are sure to become well Americanized in time, or that, if not, nothing can be done to speed the process. Little thought is given to the danger that parts of our country may continue a very long time unhealthily foreign. Most immigrants from the north and the northwest of Europe and from Canada are quickly assimilated. French Canadians and people from the Latin races, also Bohemians and Poles, are more backward; Hun |