Franklin Hiram King

“ Almost every foot of land is made to contribute material for food, fuel or fabric. Everything which can be made edible serves as food for man or domestic animals. Whatever cannot be eaten or worn is used for fuel. The wastes of the body, of fuel and of fabric worn beyond other use are taken back to the field; before doing so they are housed against waste from weather, compounded with intelligence and forethought and patiently labored with through one, three or even six months, to bring them into the most efficient form to serve as manure for the soil or as feed for the crop. ”

“ We had long desired to stand face to face with Chinese and Japanese farmers; to walk through their fields and to learn by seeing some of their methods, appliances and practices which centuries of stress and experience have led these oldest farmers in the world to adopt. We desired to learn how it is possible, after twenty and perhaps thirty or even forty centuries, for their soils to be made to produce sufficiently for the maintenance of such dense populations as are living now in these three countries. ”

“ If correspondingly exact statistical data were available from China and Korea a similarly full utilization of cultural possibilities would be revealed there.
This marvelous heritage of economy, industry and thrift, bred of the stress of centuries, must not be permitted to lose virility through contact with western wasteful practices, now exalted to seeming virtues through the dazzling brilliancy of mechanical achievements. More and more must labor be dignified in all homes alike, and economy, industry and thrift become inherited impulses compelling and satisfying. ”

“ The complete utilization of every stream which reaches the sea, reinforced by the force of the winds and the energy of the waves which may be transformed along the coast lines, cannot fully meet the demands of the future for power and heat; hence only in the event of science and engineering skill becoming able to devise means for transforming the unlimited energy of space through which we are ever whirled, with an economy approximating that which crops now exhibit, can good soil management be relieved of the task of meeting a portion of the world's demand for power and heat. ”

“ One of the most remarkable agricultural practices adopted by any civilized people is the centuries-long and well nigh universal conservation and utilization of all human waste in China, Korea and Japan, turning it to marvelous account in the maintenance of soil fertility and in the production of food. ”

“ Men and women, boys and girls, bending to their tasks, were filling shallow saucer-shaped baskets with coal and stacking them eight to ten high in a semicircle, like coin for delivery. Rising out of these pits sixteen feet up the side of the steamer and along her deck to the chutes leading to her bunkers were what seemed four endless human chains, in service the prototype of our modern conveyors, but here each link animated by its own power. ”

“ Nothing is costing the world more; has made so many enemies, and has so much hindered the forming of friendships as the inability to fully understand; hence the dove that brings world peace must fly on the wings of a common language, and the bright star in the east is world commerce, rising on rapidly developing railway and steamship lines, heralded and directed by electric communication. ”

“ On the borders and pathways between rice paddies many small stacks of straw were in waiting to be laid between the rows of transplanted rice, tramped beneath the water and overspread with mud to enrich the soil. The farmers here, as elsewhere, must contend against the scouring rush, varieties of grass and our common pigweeds, even in the rice fields. ”

“ In China enormous quantities of canal mud are applied to the fields, sometimes at the rate of even 70 and more tons per acre. So, too, where there are no canals, both soil and subsoil are carried into the villages and there between the intervals when needed they are, at the expense of great labor, composted with organic refuse and often afterwards dried and pulverized before being carried back and used on the fields as home-made fertilizers. Manure of all kinds, human and animal, is religiously saved and applied to the fields in a manner which secures an efficiency far above our own practices. ”

“ With forty centuries of such inheritance coursing in the veins of four hundred millions of people, in a country possessed of such marvelous wealth of coal and water power, of forest and of agricultural possibilities, there should be a future speedily blossoming and ripening into all that is highest and best for such a nation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Wherever paddy fields are practicable there rice is grown. In the three main islands of Japan 56 per cent of the cultivated fields, 11,000 square miles, is laid out for rice growing and is maintained under water from transplanting to near harvest time, after which the land is allowed to dry, to be devoted to dry land crops during the balance of the year, where the season permits.
To anyone who studies the agricultural methods of the Far East in the field it is evident that these people, centuries ago, came to appreciate the value of water in crop production as no other nations have. ”

“ The millets thrive in the hot summer climates; they survive when the available soil moisture is reduced to a low limit, and they grow vigorously when the heavy rains come. Thus we find in the Far East, with more rainfall and a better distribution of it than occurs in the United States, and with warmer, longer seasons, that these people have with rare wisdom combined both irrigation and dry farming methods to an extent and with an intensity far beyond anything our people have ever dreamed, in order that they might maintain their dense populations. ”

“ When the West river emerges from the high lands, with its burden of silt, to join its waters with those of the North and East rivers, it has entered a vast delta plain some eighty miles from east to west and nearly as many from north to south, and this has been canalized, diked, drained and converted into the most productive of fields, bearing three or more crops each year. As we passed westward through this delta region the broad flat fields, surrounded by dikes to protect them against high water, were being plowed and fitted for the coming crop of rice. ”

“ More than a month is saved for maturing and harvesting winter and early spring crops, or in fitting the fields for rice, by this planting in nursery beds. The irrigation period for most of the land is cut short a like amount, saving in both water and time. It is cheaper and easier to highly fertilize and prepare a small area for the nursery, while at the same time much stronger and more uniform plants are secured than would be possible by sowing in the field. The labor of weeding and caring for the plants in the nursery is far less than would be required in the field. ”

“ Crude as it appears there is nothing in western manufacture that can compete with it in first cost, maintenance or efficiency for Chinese conditions and nothing is more characteristic of all these people than their efficient, simple appliances of all kinds, which they have reduced to the lowest terms in every feature of construction and cost. The greatest results are accomplished by the simplest means. If a canal must be bridged and it is too wide to be covered by a single span, the Chinese engineer may erect it at some convenient place and turn the canal under it when completed. ”

“ The choice of the millets and the sorghums as the staple bread crops of northern China and Manchuria has been quite as remarkable as the selection of rice for the more southern latitudes, and the two together have played a most important part in determining the high maintenance efficiency of these people. In nutritive value these grains rank well with wheat; the stems of the larger varieties are extensively used for both fuel and building material and the smaller forms make excellent forage and have been used directly for maintaining the organic content of the soil. ”

“ The manufacture of cotton seed oil and cotton seed cake is one of the common family industries in China, and in one of these homes we saw rice hulls and rice straw being used as fuel. In the large low, one-story, tile-roofed building serving as store, warehouse, factory and dwelling, a family of four generations were at work, the grandfather supervising in the mill and the grandmother leading in the home and store where the cotton seed oil was being retailed for 22 cents per pound and the cotton seed cake at 33 cents, gold, per hundredweight. ”

“ While the values which have been given above, expressing the sum total of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium applied annually to the cultivated fields of Japan may be somewhat too high for some of the sources named, there is little doubt that Japanese farmers apply to their fields more of these three plant food elements annually than has been computed. The amounts which have been given are sufficient to provide annually, for each acre of the 21,321 square miles of cultivated land, an application of not less than 56 pounds of nitrogen, 13 pounds of phosphorus and 37 pounds of potassium. ”

“ It is clear that in the adoption of the succulent forms of vegetables as human food important advantages are gained. At this stage of maturity they have a higher digestibility, thus making the elimination of the animal less difficult. Their nitrogen content is relatively higher and this in a measure compensates for loss of meat. By devoting the soil to growing vegetation which man can directly digest they have saved 60 pounds per 100 of absolute waste by the animal, returning their own wastes to the field for the maintenance of fertility. ”

“ In growing such dry land crops as barley, beans, buckwheat or dry land rice the soil of the field is at first fitted by plowing or spading, then furrowed deeply where the rows are to be planted. Into these furrows fertilizer is placed and covered with a layer of earth upon which the seed is planted. When the crop is up, if a second fertilization is desired, a furrow may be made alongside each row, into which the fertilizer is sowed and then covered. ”

“ The second and third cuttings of herbage from the genya lands in Japan are used for the preparation of compost applied on the dry-land fields in the fall or in the spring of the following season. Some of these lands are pastured, but approximately 10,185,500 tons of green herbage grown and gathered from the hills contributes much of its organic matter and all of its ash to enrich the cultivated fields. Such wild growth areas in Japan are the commons of the near by villages, to which the people are freely admitted for the purpose of cutting the herbage. ”

“ With the increasing cost and ultimate exhaustion of mineral fuel; with our timber vanishing rapidly before the ever growing demands for lumber and paper; with the inevitably slow growth of trees and the very limited areas which the world can ever afford to devote to forestry, the time must surely come when, in short period rotations, there will be grown upon the farm materials from which to manufacture not only paper and the substitutes for lumber, but fuels as well. ”

“ He sees and treats each plant individually, he loosens the ground so that his liquid manure drops immediately beneath the surface within reach of the active roots. If the rainfall has been scanty and the soil is dry he may use ten of water to two of night soil, not to supply water but to make certain sufficiently deep penetration. If the weather is rainy and the soil over wet, the food is applied more concentrated, not to lighten the burden but to avoid waste by leaching and over saturation. While ever crowding growth he never overfeeds. ”