The evening times. [volume], September 03, 1906, Image 6

About The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914

Image provided by: State Historical Society of North Dakota

                
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PAGE SIX
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HILL SPOKE.
(CoBtlanrd from pace 1.)
latlon to the cities grows more pro
nounced. A considerable portion of
this year's magnificent crop will be
either reduced in quality or altogether
lost by reason of the impossibility of
getting labor to handle it properly.
Discouraged small farmers now are
selling their land to larger proprietors
who can profitably substitute machin
ery for men. The country needs more
workers on the soil. Not to turn the
stranger away, but to direct him to the
farm instead of the city, not to watch
with fear a possible increase of the
birth rate, but to use every means to
keep the boys on the farm and to send
youths from the city to swell the de
pleted ranks of agricultural industry
is the necessary task of a well-advised
political economy and an Intelligent
patriotism.
Within twenty years we must house
and employ in some fashion fifty mil
lion of additional population and by
the middle of this century there will
be approximately two and a half times
as many people in the United States
•as there are today. No nation in his
tory was ever confronted with a
sterner question than this certain pros
pect sets before us. What are we to
do with out brother, whoso keepers
we are? How are we to provide our
children with shelter and their daily
bread? Our arable public lands have
almost disappeared.
Our one resource, looking at human
ity as something more than the crea
ture of a day, is the productivity of the
soil. The reckless distribution of the
public land its division among ail the
greedy who chose to ask for it: the
appropriation of large areas for graz
ing purposes, have absorbed much of
the national heritage. Only one-half
of the land in private ownership is
no wtilled. That tillage does not pro
duce one-half of what the land might
be made to yield, without losing an
atom of its fertility. Yet tlie waste
of our treasure has proceeded so far
that theactual value of the soil for
productive purposes has already de
teriorated more than it should have
done in five centuries of use. On the
new lands of the west, where once the
wheat yield was from twenty to thirty
bushels per acre it is now from twelve
to eighteen. Frankly, and without
shame, this is attributed to the "wear
ing out" of the soil, as if the earth
were a garment that must be destroyed
by the wearing. If the earth, the
mother of humanity, is to "wear out"
what is to become of the race? The
fact is that soils, properly treated,
maintain their productiveness indefin
itely under cultivation. The further
fact is that, with the disappearance of
pestilence and the discontinuance of
war that belong to the future, all con
tributing to the growth of population,
the productive capacity of the soil must
be sustained- at its highest point or
the world suffers.
The single intelligent advance on
practical lines made by public author
ity within the last quarter of a cen
tury is the reclamation law. Initiated
and inspired and paid for by a few
western railway companies, it provides
for a real addition to the source of
food supply and the opportunity for
employment. But it is only a light
breeze blowing in the face of a cy
clone. If every project contemplated
at feasible were executed, and if all
were completed instantly by the rub
of a magic lamp, some sixty million
acres would be added to the arable
national domain. And if only forty
acres of this were assigned to each
family, it would supply the needs of
the actual addition to population, by
natural Increases and by Immigration,
for less than three years.
Certain it is that the time has come
for setting our household in order,
and creating a serious study of nation
al activity and economy according to
a truer insight and a more rational
mood.
The first step is to realize our de
pendence upon the cultivation of the
soil. The next will be to concentrate
popular interest and invention and
hope upon that neglected occupation.
We are still clinging to the skirts of
a civilization born of great cities. We
at thi* very moment use a slang which
calls the stupid man "a farmer."
Genius has shunned the farm and ex
pended itself upon mechanical appli
ances and commerce and the manifold
activities whose favorable reactions
filter back slowly to the plot of ground
upon which stand solidly the real mas
ter of himself and of his destiny. If
we comprehend our problem aright, all
this will change and a larger compre
hension of agriculture as our main
resource and our most dignifi.ed and
Independent occupation, wlil for the
future direct to their just aim, in the
improvement of methods and the In
crease of our yield the wisdom and
the science and the willing labor of
the millions who thus may transmit to
posterity an unimpaired inheritance.
Agriculture. In the most Intelligent
meaning of the term is something al
most unknown in the United States.
We have a light scratching of the soil
and the gathering of all that it can
be made to yield, by the most rapidly
exhaustive methods. In manufactures
we have to consider small economies
so carefully that the difference of a
fraction of a cent, the utilization of a
bv-product of something formerly con
signed to the scrap heap, makes the
difference between a profit and bank
ruptcy. in farming, we are satisfied
with a small yield at the expense of
the most rapid soil deterioration.
A N O S
NORTH DAKOTA
greatly to increase this minimum pres
ent yield of $5,000,000,000 per annum
of farm products. That Is, we may
add $10,000,000,000. or $15,000,000,000
every year to the national wealth if
we so choose. And this is but a be
ginning.
There are three essentials to any
agriculture worthy of the name. The
first is rotation of crops. Our low
average yield is due to the antiquated
system all too prevalent of raising the
same crop indefinitely on the same
land, until It has been worn out or so
reduced that the owner Is In danger
of poverty. Even without fertilizing,
the yield of a given area may be im
mensely increased and its productive
diversion preserved front exhaustion
merely by the restorative variety of
change which seems to be a law of all
living things. The second method of
increasing yield and preserving soil
productivity is the more liberal use
of fertilizing material, such as is pos
sible where farms are of small size
and cattle are kept in gives abundant
evidence of the extraordinary results
that may be obtained. The third factor
in improvement, better tillage, is most
interesting of all because It opens up
unmeasured possibilities. We no more
know what is the maximum food beat
ing capacity of the earth or of
1
When we have added to the national
export trade half a billion dollars per
annum, the country rings with self
congratulation and we demand the
plaudits of the world. If a process
for extracting metallic wealth from
rocks were to be discovered tomorrow,
such as to assure the country an ad
ded volume of a billion dollars in
wealth every year, the nation would
talk of nothing else. Yet these things
would be but a trifle when compared
with the possibilities of agricultural
development in the United States. The
official estimated value of all farm
products of the country last year was
$6,415,000,000. Discount this for high
prices and generally favorable con
ditions by twenty per cent, and over
$5,000,000,000 remains. It is also of
ficially recorded that of the appro
priated farm area of the United States,
a little less tha none-half Is under
cultivation. Utilize the other half and,
without any change whatever in meth
od, the output would be practically
doubled. Change methods only a lit
tle, not to high class Intensive farm
ing, but to an agriculture as far ad
vanced as that of those other coun
tries which have made the most pro
gress, and without any addition what
ever to the existing cultivated farm
area, the prodct per acre would be
doubled. We should be able, by direct
ing surplus population to the land,
and by the adoption of a system of
culture in full operation elsewhere.
frost and unfavorable elements.
and the treatment of grains and vege
tables by separate planting and in
dividual nurture, all limitations upon
earth's bounty appear to recede afar.
From two and seven-tenths acres in
the suburbs of Paris there have been
grown in a single season 250,000
pounds of vegetables. A market gar
dener of Paris declares that all food,
animal and vegetable, required for the
3,500,000 people of the two great de
partments could be grown by methods
already in use on the 3.250 square
miles of gardens surrounding the city.
It can be shown that an average of
two persons or more may be supported
on every acre of tillable land by the
highest form of intensive farming.
But dismissing this as unnecessary, it
has been shown that a people like
those of Belgium today, not an orien
tal race accustomed to a standard of
living and of labor inapplicable to us,
not living in virtual serfdom, like that
of Russia, but an industrious, fairly
intelligent and exceedingly comfort
able agricultural community, raised
from the soil food enough for the needs
of 490 persons to the square mile.
Adopting provisionally that ratio as
a point of departure, though the actual
ratio of area to population gives a fig
ure considerably higher even that this,
the 414,498,4S7 acres of improved facm
land in the United States on the date
of the last official report, an area ma
terially enlarged by the present time,
would support In comfort 317,350.405
people enabling them at the same
time to raise considerable food for ex
port and to engage in necessary manu
facturing employments. Applying the
same ration to the entire acreage of
farm lands within the United States,
both improved and unimproved, which
R. B.
THE EVENING TIMES, GRAND FORKS, N. D.
any
small proportion of its surface than
we do the rate at which people may
be able to travel a century from now.
But what has been done is sufficiently
startling. A population of 45,000.000
people in Japan is Supported on 19.000
cultivated square miles, aided by the
food products obtained from the sea.
This is because cultivation in Japan
is truly extensive that is, it is no
longer even highly developed farm
ing, but market gardening. As we
approach that science, the actual
capacity of soils for growing pur
poses, the shelter of plants from
was at the same date 835,591.774, the
population indicated as able to live
with comfort and prosperity on the
actually existing agricultural area of
this country, under an Intelligent sys
tem and a fairly competent but by no
means highly scientific method ot cul
ture, rises to 642,046,823. The conclu
sion Is that if not another acre were
to be redeemed from the wilderness,
of the soil were treated kindly and in
telligently and if Industry were dis
tributed duly and popular attention
were concentrated upon the best pos
sible utilisation of the one unfailing
national resource, there would be pro
duced all necessary food for the wants
of in round numbers, 650,000,000.
Falling to understand the needs of
the hour or to appreciate the moral to
which the point, what fortune must
await us? Within twenty years 125,
000,000 people, and before the middle
of the century over 200,000,000 must
find room and food and employment
within the United States. Where are
they to live? What are they to do?
By that time our mineral resources
will have been so nearly exhausted
that the industries related to them
must fall into a minor place. By that
time It is apparent that our dream of
conquest of world markets will be a
bursted bubble. Mr. Harold Bolce has
demonstrated that the peoples of the
Orient, the hundreds of millions of
Japan and China, with their imitative
quality, their proved ability to oper
ate modern machinery and to create
it in their own workshops after once
using it, their enormous supply of
coal and iron, their limitless cheap
labor and their patience like that of
fate, are prepared to control the mar
kets of the future. They must control
as against the policy which has estab
lished domestic conditions in manufac
turing business, on lines which make
production so expensive an affair that
we could not hope to meet the me
chanic of Germany on even terms and
must return before the despised
Chinaman. It is a mathematical fact
that within twenty years under pres
ent conditions our wheat crop will not
be sufficient for home consumption and
seed, without leaving a bushel for ex
port. Wil lthese coming millions go
into the factories? But where can
we then expect to sell shop products
in a world of competition, and who
will furnish the pay rolls? All indus
try stops when these are not forth
coming. That Is the dead wall against
which England stands dismayed.
Let us be warned in time. On every
side there is menace if our national
activity be not reorganized on the
basts of the old-fashipned common
sense. The safety valve for older
peoples has been found in emigration.
Their very relief has contributed to
our danger. The United States cannot
follow their example. It is against the
genius of our people and besides, the
circle of the "Northern Hemisphere"
is closed. At home the problem must
be worked out and its terms have
been clearly stated.
The conclusion reached points out
and emphasizes a national duty so Im
perative that it should take precedence
of all else. It Is the foe that has
overthrown civilizations as proud as
prosperous and far more strongly
fortified than our own. Nothing can
stop the onward march of nature's
laws or close the iron jaws of her
necessities when they open to crush
their victims. Either we shall under
stand our situation and make such
provision as her benignancy affords
to meet it. or we shall meet conditions
I of overcrowding and artificial stand
ards and food and employment in ade­
GREAT CLOSING OUT SALE
THE ENTIRE STOCK of DRY
GOODS, CLOAKS and CROCKER
The new ONTARIO STORE building is nearing completion and we have decided to sell out the entire stock now in
the Platky Building. We do not want to move the goods and we need the money* It is
your opportunity. Gome to this money-saving sale
ARE
Dry Goods, Flannels, White Goods, Trimmings, Embroideries, Laces, Notions, Tennis Flannels, Muslins, Underwear,
Hosiery, Ribbons, Yarn, Corsets, Muslin Underwear, Ladies' Gloves, Cloaks, Jackets, Ladies' Suits, Waists, Skirts, Furs,
Haviland and Fancy China, Hotelware, Dinnerware, Japanese Goods, Glassware, Toiletware, Cut Glass, Jardinieres, Lamps
quate to the national needs, and so be
In danger of destroying the stately
temple once reared with the highest
hopes that ever animated humanity.
Which Is It to be?
If we are to walk safely In the way
of wisdom there Is much to be done.
It Is time to begin. There must be,
first, a return to conservative and
economic methods, a readjustment of
national Ideas such as to place agri
culture. and its claims to the best in
telligence and the highest skill that
the country affords, in the very fore
front. There must be a national re
volt against the worship of manufac
ture and trade as the only forms of
progressive activity, and the false no
tion that wealth built upon theqp at
the sacrifice of the fundamental form
of wealth production can endure. A
clear recognition on the part of the
'whole people, from the highest down
to the lowest, that the tillage of the
soil is the natural and most desirable
occupation for man, to which every
other is subsidiary and to which all
else must In the end yield, Is the first
requisite. Then there will be a check
administered to the city movement that
lowered the percentage of agricultural
labor to the whole body of persons en
gaged in gainful occupations in the
United States from 44.3 in 1880 to 37.7
in 1890 and to 35.7 in 1900. With pub
lic interest firmly fixed upon the fu
ture the country, In mere self preser
vation, must give serious attention to
the practical occupation of restoring
agriculture to its due position in the
nation.
NEW YORK'S POPI'LATIOX.
New York, Sept. 3.—By 1940, or may
be even earlier, the population of the
greater New York will be three times
what it is now, or, in round numbers,
will be twelve millions, according to
a computation made by Dr. W. H.
Guilfoy, Registrar of Records to the
Department of Health. According to
the same authority, the city's popula
tion will be doubled by 1927.
Dr. Guilfoy has based his estimates
on the state census of 1905 and the
federal census of 1900. These show
that the growth of the city annually
Is 3.15 per cent compounded.
On June 1, 1905, the population of
New York City was 4,014,304 on June
1, 1910, It should be 4,700,442 on Sep
tember 23, 1927, there should be
8,028,608 persons living within the city
limits, and on October 12, 1940, there
should be 12,042,912, if the growth con
tinues at the rate it has in the last
halt decade.
But the chance that this huge total
will be reached considerably sooner is
great, because the death rate is con
tinually decreasing. For the five years
1900-'05 the average death rate per
thousand was 19.40, while for the year
ending June 1. 1906, it was only about
18.00 per thousand. If this last rate
is maintained or is bettered, as seems
probable, there would be a gain In
population of 1.40 or more per thou
sand. This is not taken Into con
sideration in Dr. Gullfoy's estimate.
This would mean that the doubling of
the city's population would be achieved
at least a year earlier than stated.
The state papers are giving con
siderable space just now to the con
dition of the insurance companies do
ing business In the state.
The plan of carrying the mail dally
between Rolla and Dunselth has been
abandoned as there were no bidders,
for the contract.
Wholesale Prices
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The financial editor of the New
York Sun has an Interesting article
on the great earning power of the
Great Northern road and sho^rs that
the man who invested $100 and hung
on has made over 900 per cent on his
money. The Sun says:
Union and Southern Pacific still
sell at prices which on the basis of
yield are considerably under the level
of Northern Pacific and Great North
ern, the disparity apparently reflect
ing the relative degree of confidence
in the managements. The compari
sons thus invited betwee'n Union Pa
cific and Great Northern discloses a
remarkable record for. the latter in
respect to the value of the rights
which from time to time have been
accorded to its .owners. It has been
estimated that a stockholder of Great
Northern who exercised all his rights
within the last twenty-three years
and still owns all the stock subscrib
ed for, would have at the present
prices a profit of about 900 per cent
from this source alone. Coming down
to the past few years the record is
still a remarkable one. In June, 1898,
stockholders had the privilege of sub
scribing at par for an additional share
of stock for every share then held by
them, the rights in this instance be
ing worth 58 per cent. In November
of the same year the stock was again
increased for the purpose of acquiring
the minority holdings of the St. Paul
Minneapolis & Manitoba road, but in
this instance It was a matter of ex
change and no rights accompanied
the transaction.
In the following year however stock
holders were allowed to subscribe for
an allotment of 20 per cent of the
holdings, making rights worth 14 per
cent at the time of the closing of the
transfer books. In January, 1900, an
additional allotment of 10 per cent of
holdings yielded rights worth 6 per
cent, and a further allotment in the
next year gave rights equivalent to a
dividend of 20 per cent. Following
that, the management of the road was
hampered by the Northern Securities
matter, and no further rights 'were
granted until October of last year,
when an allotment of 20 per cent wa»
made, this giving rights worth about
38 per cent. Assuming that a stock
holder, instead of exercising his option
to subscribe, had sold these rights In
the market, his profit in eight years
would have aggregated 138 per cent,
or an average of 17 per cent a year
during this period from this source
alone, while of course, dividend dis
tributions of 7 per cent per annum
were regularly made. If instead of
selling, and Great Northern stock
holders aB a rule do not sell, the priv
ileges had been exercised, the incre
ments of stock would show at the
present market price a net profit of
$37,000 over par value. Taking last
year's rights, which were equivalent
to 38 per cent and averaging them
over the years preceeding, during
MONDAY, SBPMMBER 3, 1906.
THE GREAT NORTHERN ROAD
HAS NETTED 900 PER CENT.
TO ORIGINAL INVESTORS—LEADS IN PRICE BE.
CAUSE INVESTORS HAVE FAITH IN ITS MANAGE
MENT INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT JIM HILL'S
GREAT ROAD TOLD IN NEW YORK MESSAGE.
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VlVv*Y
which the Great Northern was in
volved with the Northern Securities,
there Is an equivalent of nearly 8 per
cent a year for five years, and with
the 7 per cent cash dividends of
nearly 15 per cent on Great Northern
stock for that period. Perhaps the
handsomest rights of all are yet to
accrue to Great Northern stockhold
ers In connection with the Iron ore
deal now believed to be approaching
a consummation. It Is said that a ten
tative agreement haB already beeu
reached as to the basis on which this
property will pass to the United
States Steel Corporation but that the
full official sanction of the boards ot
directors of both companies has yet
to be obtained and that as a matter
of fact some minor details remain to
be adjusted. If there were any ques
tion of urgency the whole business
might be closed up at very short no
tice, but as the Steel Corporation is
for the present well supplied with ore,
and Great Northern is abundantly
supplied with money, completion of
the transaction may be allowed to
await the convenience of those who
have the matter in hand. But in the
ordinary course of events it is not
likely to be much longer delayed.
There Is a popular superstition that
as a preliminary to the consummation
of the ore deal the Great Northern
management will insist on the sale of
Union Pacific holdings of Great North
ern stock to a syndicate, so that a
rival 'road may not be In possession
of Important resources -which might
be used in carrying bn aggression
against the company which yielded
them, but it is understood that Union
Pacific has already disposed of by
far the greater part of its holdings of
the Hill stocks in the open market,
netting a profit of about $75,000,000,
including, the rights on Great Northern
last year, and that, allowing present
market quotations for the remainder
of the holdings the aggregate profit is
brought up to about the $200,000,000
mark, or approximately enough to
guarantee 4 per cent dividends on the
entire issue of $200,000,000 of Union
Pacific stock for the next twelve and
a half years.
This consideration may have entered
Into the action taken by the Union
Pacific directors 4n deciding -to make
the dividend 10 per cent instead of 6
per cent by drawing 4 per cent a year
from returns on "investments."
The Langddn Democrat says one ot
the most peculiar phenomena ever
seen in Langdon was apparent last
Wednesday afternoon when the butter
flies were so thick that they completely
covered the trees surrounding the
court house grounds. The scene pre
sented was so peculiar that many per
sons gathered along the sidewalk to
view it. The trees were so completely
covered that they appear to be
brown, as from the frosts during the
late autumn.
GRAND FORKS
NORTH DAKOTA