The Butler Weekly Times Newspaper, November 30, 1905, Page 10

RL CE DIET I Me pot naa has not yet been] > Roose- ds only i the lesson of Me ght ch has just been ° tely diverts the 1 i » of this country fr supreme and overshad- « mee, which should be 1 1 public mind as by a & sh = from every victory | V oundly 1 se t t « t 1 strength which comes only fi ural life—from livia and hich : § t with his fellowmen—the cul y life. A Nation of Gardeners. " Tey are not a nation of farmers, us tand the word. They are of gardeners, There is i r isolation nor conges- tion in their lite. They dwell, the great majority of them, not in great Cities, but in closely settled rural com- munities, The ry nh and the tene- ment ure alike foreign to the life of the Japanese. The greatprinciple that mustcontrol our own national development hence- forth is that the land shall be subdi- vided into the smallest tracts from which one man's labor will sustain a family in comfort, and that every ebild, boy or girl, in the public schools should be so trained in those schools that it will know how to till such a tract of land for a livelihood. In other words, let us reproduce in this country the conditions so _ well described in an article from the Book- lovers’ Magazine for August, 1904, from which we quote the following:— “While Japan is cannonadingits way to rank with Christian powers as a Ps ee me eyes ome lz al 4 [@< nor military equipment, nor facturing skill. Western nations will fail fully dynamic intensity of J will dangerously underestima the formidable possibilities of the Greater Japan—the Dai Nippon—of tomorrow, until they begin to study seriously the icultural triumphs of that empire. Japan, more — scientifically other nation, past or present, has ted the t of sending the roots manu- | Pr | We | to grasp the secret of the} f Japan today, and | area, = Beye population, its wealth, its rev- than | national strength, jand natural resou , th , sloped s yet, 1) re thar earth over this immense tickled the Our Own Country. When we compare Japan, with its enves, igs trade and--tomumerce, its with any section of our own country equal to it in area “es, We are uinazed of its civilization enduringly into the] at the great possibilities of future de- soil “Progressive experts of hig ity throughout the Occident mit that in all the annals © culture there is hing that ever 4 proached the scientific skill of Sunrise husbandry, Patient diligence, with knowledge of the chemistry of soil and the physiology of plants, have yielded results that re astounded the most advanced agriculturists in Western nations,” The Safe Foundation, The creation of the conditions above described under which the people of @ nation are rooted to the soil in homes of thelr own on the land, is not only good statesmanship and the highest patriotism, but it is the only safe foun- dation for an enduring national structure, To ignore and neglect this founda- tion while we build battleships, equip armies and annex Islands and dig Isthmian canals, is as fatal a mistake as it would be to build a twenty-story skyseraper In Chicago without any foundation but the mud of Lake Michigan, We need not muster out our armies, nor dismantle our battleships nor evacuate the Thilippines, nor stop work on the Isthmian Canal, but the fact remains, as clear as the sun from an unclouded sky at noonday, that the attention of our people as a nation is riveted on our naval and military af- fuirs and schomes of forelgn explolta- author- aa a a Mths ‘HE MIDDLE WEST. velopment in our own country. The entire population of Japan is about forty-five million, of which thirty million is a farming population, -land this vast population of thirty mil- lon farmers and thelr families is sus- tained on nineteen thousand square es of irrigated land. There is no ulture in Japan but irrigated agriculture. They have learned that water is the gr fertilizer known to nature, and save and utilize it with the same care that they use every other available process for the fertili- zation of their fields, Nineteen thousand square miles is an area about one hundred and thirty- five miles square, and jn a square in a corner of the State of Illinois, the com- parative size of which to the rest of the State is shown on the accompany- ing map, is sustained a nation which, to the amazement of all other peoples on the earth, has sprung to the front ug one of the great World powers, Source of Power, .And the Tome Acre farms or gar dens—the rural homes of Japan—are the source of that national power, Commenting on this, the suthor of the article in the August 14 Book— lovers’ Magazine, quoted from above, says in that article:— ‘From what its advanced agricult- ure has made its ins to yield, Japan has fed and clothed and educated Its multiplying masses, fast nearing the VIRGUNER FRANKTORT SCHARLESAN | 6 - Tho black square in the above map represents the total area of cultivated land in Japan, supporting thirty millions of agricuitural people. tion, to the disregard and neglect of | fifty million figure; It has stacked up first-class fighting nation, it is not nes- Jecting it ; of rice, genge, millet u ts of rice, ge 1 roves Of MUIDCITY s plots of tea and 10, its pricel bau 1 Mitsumata shrubs, and its multi-mil- berries, vegetables, fruits and flowers. The thousands of patriots that have marehed to the frout have not thinned the ranks of the mightier hosts tilling the soil. Phirty million farmers are gathering ample harvests in the diminutive tields of Jupan. Husbandry Dignified. “Por twenty-five centuries the Sun- rise sovereigns have dignified hus- bandry as the most important and mist bouorable industrial calling in the empire, and now more than sixty per cent of the Mikado’s subjects till with incomparable skill the limited eoil of his islands, “The same diligent genius that ena- bies a landscape gardener in Japan to compass within a few square yards 0} land a forest, a bridge-spanned stream, @ water-fall and lake, a chain of ter- raced hills, gardens and chrysanthe- mus, hyacinths, peonies and pinks, a beetling crag crowned with a dwarfed conifer, and through all the dainty park meandering paths, with here a shrine and there a dainty summer house, has made it possible for the far- mers of the empire to build up on less than nineteen thousand square miles of arable land the most remarkable agricultural nation the world has known. If all the tillable acres of Japan were merged into one field, a man in an automobile, traveling at the rate of fifty miles an hour, could skirt the entire perimeter of arable Japan in eleven hours. Upon this narrow freehold Japan has reared a nation of imperial power, which {s determined to enjoy commercial preeminence over all the world of wealth and_opportu- nity from Siberia to Siam and already, by the force of arms, is driving from the shores of Asia the greatest mon- archy of Europe. Roots in the Soil. The secret of the success of the lit- tle Daybreak Kingdom has been a mystery to many students of nations. Patriotism does not explain the riddle of its strength, neither can co: lion gardens of sonen—t tt citizenship which will be an enduring national foundation forever, and en- larging our home markets, which awill he unaffected by any foreign complica- tions or trade disturbances, The attention of our people of late has been so much absorbed by the problems of our export trade, that we overlook the fact that the United States today manufactures annually a product aggregating in total value the combined manufactured product of the three other greatest manufactur- ing nations of the world. England, France and Germany, and we con- sume ninety-two per cent of our entire yeh manufactured products at ome. Create Farm Homes. And if every farm in the United States were cut in two, and a new f | home created on it so that the number of farm homes, and the capital in- vested in, and labor devoted to agri- culture throughout the entire United States, were thus doubled, the result would be an enlargement of our popu- lation, our home market for manu- factures, and our power as a nation, almost beyond the power of the imag- ination to picture to the mind. It is to the development of its vast agricultural resources and the creation of a closely settled population of far- mers and gardeners, who will .culti- vate the soil by the most intensive methods, that the Middle West must look if it is to achieve its full destiny in wealth, power and population. The resources of the great territory extending westward from the crest of the Alleghany Mountains to the one hundredth meridian—the edge of tie arid region—and from the scurces of the Mississippi River on the north to its outlet to the Gulf on the south, are so largely. agricultural that it offers the ideal section of the earth for the development of a nation along a preponderating rural population. There is no other section of the world’s surface where latent agricul- such inexhaustible the vastly more important problem of | gold in its treasu has @reated 2 has capture growing share of European commer has alr led commerce Ame acitic, has erowded its cities with roaring factories, and has given costly and triumphant equip- ment to its ay fleets and regi- ments. And it has secomplished all this otit of the profit Y gleaned from a farm area scarcely large enough fo atrord storage room for the agricultural machinery in use in the United States.” Could there be a more striking proof of the oft-quoted words of David Starr Jordan, that:— “Stability of national character goes with firmness of foot-hold on soll.” : Comparison of Areas. Now compare Japan and its devel- opment with the possibilities of devel- opment in the Middle West. The area of all the islands compris- ing the Empire of Japan is 147,665 square miles; of this only 19,000 square miles is available for agricult- ure, for every available acre in that country is cultivated. The total combined area of Wiscon- sin, Illinois and Indiana {s ~ 146,360 square miles, and it is safe to say that considerably more than half of this area—probably more than two thirds— is capable of as close a cultivation, and of sustaining as dense a popula- tion per square mile as the cultivated area of Japan, The water with which to trrigate it now runs to waste. The water which Chicago turns into her drainage canal, instead ‘of producing agricultral city to the Gulf of Mexico, in that territory. the irrigated farms of the West }adapted to dntens' \tide of popu.auon, end turn it from ;|sloyd work and wealth by irrigating the lands of Ili- aois, produces law suits with St. Louis because it runs to waste past that ‘The time will come when irrigated agricultute in the Middle West will the i rb every drop of water falling lines of Japanese develo»ment, with) And when the irrigation canals and Went ao irene just ‘an trrigation as in + in the West has dried up Tulare Lake ¢ lay ezine and work vu! U i. stored in Teservoirs, and every drop devoted to beneficial use, a use that will be so valuable that its value for n will count for nothing in comparison. It may be R great many yea wfore this will happen, but it is certain to tome. In no other -way can the yast population with which this country will teem within a few hundred years be provided with the food iv sustain it 2 Japan, from her total area of 147.- O53 squire miles, of which only 19,000 | are cullivated, collected an annual revenue before the war with Russia began of snd her exports amounted The average pc mile of Japan is 299.76, but only one- seventh of her territory is actually under cultivation. A Thousand Miles Square. A section of our own country con- tained within a square extending one thousand miles north from New Or- leans and ove thousand miles west from LDittsburg, and containing one million square miles, if as densely populated as Japan, would sustain a popukition of 300,000,000; but a much larger proportion of this great square in the center of the United States could be intensely farmed than ii Japan, where only one-seventh of the total area is cultivated, On the 19,000 square miles of land in Japan that is actually farmed, they sustall 000,000 farmers, It is a safe estimate that at least one-half of the thousand mile square central sec tion of the Unued States above des- eribed could be as closely cultivated as the productive fields of Japan. Those Japanese fields sustain over fifteen hundred people to the square mile, At the same ratio of population, our own thousand mile square central section would sustain 750,000,000 of farming population alone, A population of over fifteen hundred to the square mile su wed by agri- culture seems to the ordinary mind ip- credible; but on the Island of Jersey, off the English coast, a population of over thirteen hundred to tae square mile is sustained by out of door’agri- culture in a elim: by no means best farming, It must be borne in mind that we are talking now of the possibilities of future development, and the facts and fig s uhove en will no doubt be looked upon as utterly chinerical by the avernge reader - Degeneracy i y in mind however, again, that) Ungland. }erm and the country summer term of | each school, » based only upon th ssump- ein this country should at: | tou point of development alres y! the Japanese people, anc rests tl national sength, ‘That our development dur vdast bau-ce, has not been Tan, Tre fonowed ss of Enghind, rathe tnd while, in fifty years, | restored the land to ber has Japan people and rooted them to the soil in mit done of their own, England has contirar, She has driven the farms to the r ‘ have become fac- operative and degenerated | ically smd mentally to such a de: | iat the degeneracy of her citl | » now presents itself to the of England as a most ap- roblem. ’ e doing the me thing, but) ing the ciTects | y hecuuse we have still} rdea cf our peopie on Back to the Land. We have much to do to reverse the the cities Hack to the lind—from the ienement to te garden. It must not ve iimigincd tuat it is necessary, i rdey ty accomplish this, that the s in our cities or in our fae- should quit their present em- ab 4 ‘come farmers. All is that the facilities portation afforded by stem should be availed y factory family upon of li » Gone, ut vial ad the problem 2» Matter le se for nothing »cuckens and keep a goat. The children of the family will have fresh air and sunshine and pure milk, and will grow up to be healthy men and women, The lever with which we must move our populition back to the land school but to ust be the public system, Gardens aad Handicraft. Tivery child in the public schools, yor girl, must be trained from its ost days of school to_culti- }yate the ground and a things grow in a garden, and to raise poul- try, nud do ail that needs to be done to provide the food for a family from an acre of land, Add to this a training in simple ly mouibed. . school of ail city e schools should be changed. There ension should be a short — hig yr ing which the time should be ¢ iv en to a instruction from {he books und in In icator handicraft within doors. e There should be a summer ‘term ot equal length dyring which the schools would be transferred to the suburbs, nd work in summer schvol gardens. . children should. be taken ba ck and forth to these summer school dens at public expense, as they how taken to from the consoli- dated rural schools on the trolley lines in some of the New England Sethe yaeation, which would not need be so lor mild be divided he tion and a fall vacation, spring va s between the winter city intervening Building a Strong Citizenship. Of course, many will hold up their hands and s this is impossible. England finds it rmpossible, as the result of her system of great landed estites, to provide her people with homes on the lund, and in conse- quence her ruin as a nation is only a question of a comparatively brief time. JxXpan, on tife contrary, put forth her hand and solved the very problem which, to England, seems impossible, and behold the results in her strength and power as a nation, It is only a question with us, as a people, whether we will follow the lead of Japan, and profit by her les- sons, or follow the lead of England and share in her eventual.ruin, The intluences which are destroying England are at work steadily and in- sidiously in this nation, and though it will take longer for them to work our ruin, it is sure to come if we do not find a way to root the great majority of our people to the land in homes of their own, as Japan has done, and as we can do, unless we are as blind and as impotent in deal- of the tension at a glance. Its use means time saving and easier sewing. ~ It’s our own invention and is found only on the HITE Sewing Machine. We have other striking improvements that appeal to the careful buyer. Send for our elegant H, T. catalog. Warre Swine Macuine Co. 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