Fifteen crops of wheat of 25 bushels per acre require 433 pounds of nitrogen, or one-tenth of the amount which the soil lost during the years of cropping. This soil, under “bonanza farming,” has lost outright nitrogen sufficient for 155 crops, each requiring as much nitrogen as does a crop of 25 bushels of wheat per acre. When the amount wasted on a single acre is multiplied by the acres of the vast, fertile wheat plains of the west, where “bonanza farming” is carried on, the loss of nitrogen to our country is seen to be so great as to appal the thoughtful man who looks forward to the generations who will want this element in the not distant future. Happily, this “bonanza farming” has its own cure. When mining-farming reduces the yield so that profits vanish, then these great farms will be cut up into modest-sized ones, true homes will rise, intermittent labor and the tramp harvest-hand will disappear, and the last and only condition which tends to produce an uninstructed peasant class will cease to exist.

The other great “bonanza” industry which still remains and which affects agriculture, and the land directly, is lumbering. This, like “bonanza” wheat farming, may be classed as a mining industry, carried on at the surface instead of in the bowels of the earth. Without rational direction, restraint or control, this agricultural mining goes on until the sources from which the profits are drawn are so depleted as to be no longer profitable. There is no home or competency for the farm boys in the lumber camp or on the great wheat farm. Here the rule is to take all and return nothing. After the ax and the binder, comes the fire to complete the wanton destruction. The shade-giving and moisture-conserving brush, stubble and straw, and all living plants, are destroyed, and nothing but the mineral matter, unmixed with surface humus, remains. A blackened waste, devoid of animal or vegetable life, is left behind. No homes can be reared here, no competence secured until nature, assisted by man in the coming years, slowly restores the covering and productivity of the soil. This unwise treatment of the land must soon come to an end; then the hardy home-builder will have opportunity to repair, by more rational methods, some of the wanton and unnecessary waste.

Is it too much to hope that before the close of another decade every state and territory will have a school of forestry, and that all national forest domains will have been brought under rational supervision and control? The future home-builders will need them, and the present owners of homes have a right to a share of the benefits which flow from intelligently managed forest preserves. It is not enough to show that intelligent farming is highly remunerative at the present time; provision must be made by which the children and the children’s children, for all generations, may have opportunity for securing a competence from rural pursuits.

Can a competence and a comfortable home be secured by the renter? If not, why not? Shall the farmer put his little capital into a home and run in debt for supplies and necessary equipment; or had he better rent, and start even? This depends to a large extent upon the individual. A successful country life does not depend upon owning the land in fee simple. Here is a picture of what may be called “a country gentleman” (Fig. 3). He, his father and his grandfather, all have been renters of the same farm. He has a competence and an assured income. This hue and cry about renting has no terrors for those who have been renters and have found that this is often the most satisfactory way to start when capital is limited. The merchant of limited means invariably rents the building in which he does business, because it is safer and usually more economical to rent than to purchase the business block.

In an old city of 12,000 inhabitants, it was found that 84 per cent of the business was carried on in rented rooms. The trouble in renting farms in the United States lies chiefly in the fact that there are no well digested laws or old customs which help to guide the renter and rentee. A few simple laws would provide for adjusting the value of betterments removed from or put upon the farm at any time. Long leases, with inducements to long occupancy, would give the rentee a permanent occupier. The renter has quite as good a chance of finally securing a home in fee simple as has the man who purchases and mortgages heavily. The possession of a valuable farm and an assured income, especially in a new country, is often most surely and easily secured by renting for a series of years. Good farming pays liberal profits even on rented land. If there is failure, it is the man and not the occupation which causes it. The fault will not be “in the moon,” but in ourselves if we fail or become underlings.