Various - "Scientific American Supplement, No. 303"

Frances W. Graham and Georgeanna M. Gardenier - "Two Decades"

Alexis de Tocqueville - "American Institutions And Their Influence"

Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne - "After Long Years and Other Stories"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Checking the Waste

M >> Mary Huston Gregory >> Checking the Waste




By comparing the methods employed in different states, the few general
laws have been worked out which must be applied in order to farm
successfully in this region, though the details differ with local
differences in altitude, climate, soil, and rainfall. Here farming is
being reduced to a science. In other parts of the country a man sows his
seed and nature cares for it, and gives him his harvest; but here he
must wring from nature all that he gets, so it is only the man who farms
according to fixed laws who can hope to succeed.

This system is usually called "dry farming," though "scientific farming"
would perhaps be a better name, for the same principles that are
absolutely necessary here will greatly increase the yield anywhere. The
most important principle is to conserve every particle of moisture in
the soil. It is necessary to go deep into the soil to find the
underlying moisture. The seed-bed is made very deep. Plowing is from
sixteen to nineteen inches deep, while in well-watered regions it is
only about six inches. This deep seed-bed is thoroughly cultivated to
make the soil porous, the soil being reduced to a fine powder. After
sowing the seed, the ground is packed as solidly as possible. This is
done by especially designed machines. The surface of the soil is kept
broken all the time to prevent the escape of the moisture. This rule
applies equally to all soils in dry weather, and will often save a crop
of corn in any part of the country during a drought.

These are simple rules, but the practice of them is opening up the great
semi-arid regions, not of the United States only, but of the whole
earth. Western Canada, a large part of Australia, the Kalahari Desert of
Africa, and many parts of Asia, which are all semi-arid, will in time
become productive instead of barren.

It must be remarked that the grains of the East could not
withstand the severe winters in a large part of the Northwest, so
the Department of Agriculture sent men all over the world to find
drought-and-cold-resisting grains. They found a hard winter wheat, the
most nutritious in existence, which is now growing all the way from the
Dakotas to the Pacific Ocean, producing crops far above the yield of the
eastern states. 50,000,000 bushels of this wheat was raised in 1907.

The soil is the natural disintegrated rock, rich in the mineral
elements, but lacking in decayed vegetable matter. The crops soon
exhaust the nitrogen, and as clover and the common alfalfas can not grow
there, the problem of finding legumes has been the most serious one
facing this new region; but in Siberia the Agricultural Department has
recently found a new clover and three varieties of alfalfa that will
stand the cold, and Secretary Wilson believes that these will solve the
problem.

Every acre brought under cultivation adds to the world's food supply.
Can we even dream of what it will mean when 200,000,000 acres are added
to the farm lands of this continent? It means prosperity for the farmers
themselves, homes for those who are now crowded in cities, work for the
idle, and food for the hungry. It means wealth and happiness for
thousands now living and millions yet to come.


REFERENCES

Lands. Report National Conservation Commission.

Soil Wastage. Chamberlain. Report White House Conference of Governors.

Conservation of Soils. Van Hise. (Same.)

Commercial Fertilizers. Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin, 44.[A]

[Footnote A: Department of Agriculture bulletins are free unless a price
is indicated, and may be obtained by application to The Department of
Agriculture. Washington, D. C. Postage is free in the United States.
These bulletins contain the latest scientific information and result of
research work by the government.]

The Liming of Soils. Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin, 57.

Renovation of Worn-out Soils. Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin, 245.

Soil Fertility. Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin, 257.

Management of Soils to Conserve Moisture. Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin,
266.

Fertilizers for Cotton Soils. Bureau of Soils Bulletin, 62.

Work of the Bureau of Soils. Bureau of Soils Bulletin.

Exhaustion and Abandonment of Soils. Bureau of Soils Bulletin. Whitney,
5c.

Phosphorus. Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin.

The Present Status of the Nitrogen Problem. Yearbook Dept. of
Agriculture Reprint, 411.

The Search for Leguminous Forage Crops. Yearbook Dept. of Agriculture
Reprint, 478.

Leguminous Crops. Yearbook Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin, 278.

Progress in Legume Inoculation. Yearbook Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin,
315.

A Grain for Semi-arid Lands. Yearbook Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin,
139.

The Sugar-Beet. Yearbook Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin, 52.

Dry-Land Problems in the Great Plains Area. Yearbook Dept. of
Agriculture Reprint, 461.

Reports of Dry Farming Congress.

The Natural Wealth of the Land. J. J. Hill, Report Governor's
Conference.

National Wealth and the Farm. J. J. Hill.




CHAPTER III

FORESTS


Aside from the soil itself, which supports all life, there is no other
resource so important to man as the forests, with their many uses
covering so wide a range.

The beauty and restfulness of a forest, the grace and dignity of single
trees, the shade for man and animals, the shelter from storms--all these
things appeal to our love for the beautiful, and touch our higher
nature. The person who loves trees is a better person than the one who
does not. As the poet expresses it:

"Ah, bare must be the shadeless ways, and bleak the path must be,
Of him, who, having open eyes, has never learned do see,
And so has never learned to love the beauty of a tree.

"Who loves a tree, he loves the life that springs in star and clod,
He loves the love that gilds the clouds, and greens the April sod,
He loves the wide Beneficence; his soul takes hold on God."

Trees have played an important part in the history of our country: The
"Charter Oak," in the hollow of which the original charter of
Connecticut remained hidden from the agents of the king; "Eliot's Oak,"
under which the gospel was first preached to the Indians; the
wide-spreading elm under which William Penn signed his treaty of peace
with the Indians.

But no tree has held so dear a place in the hearts of the people, or
been so watchfully cared for as the old "Washington Elm" still standing
in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Under it Washington took command of the
continental army. It is visited every year by hundreds of persons, who
stand with uncovered heads beneath its spreading branches. Many years
ago it was struck by lightning and the upper part torn off, but all the
broken edges have been sealed with pitch to stop decay. It has been
covered with fine wire netting to prevent the bark being chipped off by
relic hunters. It is carefully guarded from damage by insects, and the
boughs are stayed by strong wires.

And so we might name many instances of trees that are loved and cared
for on account of their beauty, stateliness or some event connected with
them, but it is the usefulness of trees that we shall mention in this
chapter.

In the larger use of forests is included their effect on climate and
rainfall. It is generally believed that clouds, passing over the damp,
cool air that rises from a forest, are more likely to be condensed into
rain, and so we can establish the general rule that the country which is
well wooded will probably have a larger rainfall than the one which has
few trees.

Twenty-five years ago Kansas was a prairie state with few trees, and the
semi-arid plains extended half-way across the state, but thousands of
acres of trees have been planted, and crops have been cultivated, and
the more forests and crops the farmer plants the more rain comes to
water them. The great droughts which used to ruin their crops year after
year no longer disturb them. The hot winds which could undo a whole
season's hard work in a day are seldom heard of now. Kansas is no longer
in the semi-arid region. It is one of the most productive states in the
Union, and this has come, not by dry-farming, but by the cultivation of
the soil and by the planting of trees.

Though rainfall increases, destructive floods become fewer, for the
humus and the leaves on the ground in the forests hold the water as in
a vast sponge, and, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, they keep
the waters in check and distribute the rainfall gently and evenly on the
lands below. They thus prevent erosion of the hillsides and balance the
water supply of rivers.

Trees supply us with food and medicine, and greatest of all their direct
uses, they furnish lumber for all kinds of manufacturing.

We can not think of life without the comforts and conveniences that we
get from wood; but interior China affords a striking example of what it
means for a nation to have a very small supply. There is no wood for
manufacturing and the natives search the hillsides for even the tiniest
shrubs to burn and even for grass scratched from the soil. Once this
part of China was a great forest region, but century by century the
forests have been used, not rapidly, as in this country, for China is
not a great industrial nation, but surely, until there is hardly a twig
left.

China is not the only nation that has suffered in this way. Many of the
ancient peoples have entirely passed away; and the destruction of their
forests, as we have seen in the previous chapter, was the first cause
leading to their extinction.

Denmark was originally almost covered with forests. These were cut down
for fuel, for lumber, and to make way for agriculture. For a long time
there was no attempt to restore them, and now a large area, once
productive, has become a sandy desert. In the same way, large parts of
Austria and Italy have become valueless because the growing forests were
cut down.

In France the forests at the head-waters of the Rhone and the Seine were
cut down and fierce floods began to pour down the valleys each year,
bringing destruction to property and crops all along their way. But
France has long ago learned the lesson of forestry, and as soon as the
danger was seen, the mountain sides were replanted with trees, and since
then conditions have been gradually changing for the better.

France has had another experience in forestry that has taught her what
can be done to save her waste lands. Near the coast were great
sand-dunes. The winds drove them each year farther inland, and the sand
was gradually driving out the vineyards and farm crops. In 1793 the
planting of forests on these dunes was begun. Of 350,000 acres, 275,000
have been planted in valuable pine forests. More than half of these
belong to private owners and there is no record of their value, but the
portion belonging to the government has yielded a large income above all
expenses, and is worth $10,000,000 as land; and this was not only
valueless but was a menace to the surrounding country. In the interior
of France a sandy marsh covering 2,000,000 acres has been changed into a
profitable forest valued at $100,000,000.

A hundred years ago all the eastern part of the United States and the
Rocky Mountains and the Pacific coast region were covered with thick
forests hundreds and hundreds of miles in extent. Evergreens--the pines,
hemlocks, cedars and spruces--grew near the coast in great abundance,
while farther inland were found the most magnificent hardwood forests in
the world.

Unfortunately, the first needs of the early settlers required them to
cut down these mighty forests. The soil, which was very fertile, could
not, of course, be used for farming purposes until the land was cleared,
and so this was the first necessity.

The wood was used to build the cabins, to make the rude furniture, the
wagons and ox-carts, and for fuel, but this disposed of only a small
amount of the wood that came from the clearing of a farm. No man could
give it to his neighbor when all had more than they could use, and there
was no market for its sale. The trees were burned in large quantities to
clear the land for the planting of crops.

Wood was of the greatest value to the first settlers, but it was also
the greatest hindrance to their making homes, so they took no care
whatever of what they could not use. It was burned or left on the
ground to decay. As towns sprang up, there began to be a demand for
lumber for houses, for furniture, for vehicles and for fuel from those
who had no trees of their own. This made a market for the best grades of
lumber at a low price, but almost every farmer would give away trees of
the best hardwood to any person who would cut and haul them away.

Conditions have changed very slowly, but very surely. In every state, in
every county and in every township there has been a steady clearing of
the land as it fills with new home-makers. At the same time the demand
has grown enormously each year from the dwellers in cities.

The opening up of railroads and telegraph lines in the middle and latter
part of the century made a great demand for wood. The building of ships
and steamboats, the opening of mines, the establishing of telephone and
trolley systems, the building of great cities, all these have called
steadily and increasingly for wood.

The time has long passed when wood was a hindrance to progress. For a
long time there has been a ready market at high prices and it is rapidly
reaching the point where we shall face an actual shortage of timber.
This is not true of all parts of the country, of course. Maine,
Washington, and parts of Oregon, Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi,
Wisconsin and some other states, still have vast quantities of lumber,
but trains and ships carry it to all parts of the world so there is no
lack of a market.

The change from plenty, even great excess, to need, has come so
gradually that few persons, even those living in the forest regions,
have realized until within a very few years how general is their
destruction. Those who, riding about a small portion of the country
familiar to them, have been struck with the disappearance of the woods
and the cultivation of the lands, have looked upon it wholly as a sign
of progress, and have not realized that the same thing is going on in
every part of the country.

The wholesale destruction of the forests, without replanting, has come
mostly from ignorance. We have had all our resources in such great
abundance that we have not hitherto needed to learn the lessons that the
Old World has learned, sometimes at the cost of whole nations, but the
time has come when we _do_ need to learn them.

The first lesson is to study the various uses of the forests, to find
how they are being affected by present use, their wastes, and the best
means of preserving them. When all the people have learned these
lessons, they will, undoubtedly, gladly set about righting the wrongs
that have been done in the past.

The original forests of this country covered an area of about
850,000,000 acres, with nearly five and a half trillion board feet of
"merchantable," that is, salable, timber according to present standards.
(A board foot is one foot long, one foot wide and one inch in
thickness.) Considerably more than half the original number of acres are
still forested, but most of the land has been cut or burned over, some
of it several times, and the amount remaining of salable timber, which
includes only the best part of the trunk, is from two to two and a half
trillion, that is from 1,400 to 2,000 billion, feet. The yearly cut for
all purposes, including waste, is now over two hundred billion board
feet;--some authorities place the amount as high as two hundred and
seventy-five billion feet. This, however, probably includes firewood,
one of the largest uses of wood, but taken very largely from worm-eaten
wood that could not be cut into lumber. It also probably includes
boughs, and other unsalable parts of the tree.

The timber cut doubled from 1880 to 1905, is still increasing at almost
the same rate, and, if we had the timber, it would doubtless double
again by 1930. But even at the present rate, the forests now standing,
without allowance for growth, would be exhausted in from ten to sixteen
years. The yearly growth of timber in our present forests is estimated
at from forty-two to sixty billion feet, and the yearly cut at from
three to three and a half times the amount added for growth.

That is, we are using in four months at least as much wood as will
naturally grow in a year. The other eight months we shall be using our
forest reserves, and each year there will be less forest land to produce
new growth, as well as less old wood to cut.

Mr. R. A. Long, an expert lumberman who spoke before the first
Conservation Congress, estimated then that the forests, making allowance
for growth, would not last over thirty-five years. The government
figures indicate that they will last about thirty-three years, at the
present rate, but as the rate has been doubling every twenty-five years,
many persons who have studied the situation believe that the supply will
not continue in commercial quantities for manufacturing more than
twenty-five years.

We must understand, must think, what the destruction of our forests
would mean to us. It would mean fierce droughts and fiercer floods. It
would mean the gradual drying up of our streams, a scarcity of water to
drink, as in China to-day. It would mean that the manufacture of wooden
articles would practically cease. The thousand conveniences that we
enjoy as a matter of course would become rare and costly. It would mean
that only the rich could build houses of wood, and this would force the
masses of people into crowded quarters, not only the poor, but the
well-to-do also. These are only a few of the many disasters that would
follow the loss of our forests, and all these things might come to pass
before we ourselves are old!

If we knew that at a certain time a tidal wave would engulf our homes,
how we should work to save all that we could before the calamity
overtook us! And we should set about the saving of our forests with
equal care, for their destruction means distress for every one of us.

Fortunately, this is only the dark possibility. The methods of
prevention are well known to those who have studied the history of the
nations that have fallen, and the nations that have risen to power. It
is only necessary that all the people should know these things and
realize their importance, in order to keep conditions as they are at
present or even to better them.

The methods of prevention are five. They are:

(1) To use the trees in the most careful and conservative way without
the great wastes now common.

(2) To save the vast areas of forests that are now burned each year.

(3) To prevent loss from insects.

(4) To use substitutes: that is, to use other and cheaper materials to
take the place of wood whenever possible.

(5) To plant trees and to replant where old ones have been cut, until
all land that is not fitted for agriculture is covered with forests.

These are only the rules that good sense and good business would teach
us to follow, but we have not followed any of them in the past, and now
it will be necessary to do all these things if we are to continue to
have enough wood to use to keep pace with our progress in other
directions.

As an example of the rapid rate at which we are consuming our forests,
we use nine times as much lumber for every man, woman and child as the
people of Germany use, and twenty-five times as much as the people of
England use. This is due to several causes, many of which we would not
wish changed.

To begin with, this was a new and undeveloped country, a large part of
which had never been inhabited, and all the land, as fast as it was
occupied, must be built up with entirely new homes; and because wood is
the cheapest building material it is the one generally used.

The growth of all European countries is mostly by the increase of their
own people, while this is only a small percentage of our growth, which
comes largely from immigration from other countries, so the increase of
population is much greater here and the proportion of new homes needed
is far greater. Improvements of all kinds, public buildings, churches
and bridges were built in almost every European community long ago,
while in this country these things are being done each year in thousands
of places.

Wages are higher in this country, and more people are able to afford the
luxuries of life, vehicles, musical instruments, and the large variety
of small conveniences to be found in almost every American home but seen
in few homes of the poorer class in Europe.

These are a few of the reasons why we use such a large amount of lumber
each year. They are all conditions that mean a larger, better nation
than we could otherwise have, with a higher standard of living, and
while in some particulars, as we shall show, there should be changes
that would conserve our forests, the great wastes do not lie in the
_use_, but in the _abuse_ of the forests.

Now let us see what use is made of all the wood that is cut every year.
The greatest use of all is for firewood, but this is largely the
decaying or faulty trees from farmers' wood-lots, or the waste product
of a lumber region, so this does not constitute so heavy a drain on the
forests as the fact that 100,000,000 cords a year are used, would
indicate.

Twenty times as much of the salable timber is sawed into lumber as is
used in any other way. Nearly 40,000,000,000 board feet are thus used,
but lumber is used in a variety of ways, while the other cuts are
confined to a single use.

The first and greatest use of lumber is for building purposes, for
houses, barns, sheds, out-buildings, fences, and for window-sashes,
doors and inside finishings of all buildings, even those made of other
materials.

Next comes furniture of all kinds,--chairs, tables, beds, and all other
house, office, and school furniture; musical instruments, pianos, etc.,
vehicles of all kinds,--farm wagons, delivery wagons, carriages and
other pleasure vehicles, including parts of automobile bodies,
agricultural implements, plows, harrows, harvesters, threshing machines
and other farm implements. Though these are built largely of iron, yet
one-fourth of the implement factories report a use of 215,000,000 feet
of lumber a year, so the entire output of these factories calls for a
large amount of wood from our forests.

Car building is the other really great use for lumber. Freight cars,
passenger cars, and trolley cars use each year an increasingly large
proportion of the product of our saw-mills.

After these come the various smaller articles, which, though themselves
small, are used in every home and are turned out in such vast quantities
as to require a very large amount of lumber each year.

An empty spool seems a trifle, but the making of all the spools requires
the cutting of hundreds of acres of New England's best birch woods.
Butter dishes, fruit crates, baskets, wooden boxes of all kinds, tools
and handles, kitchen utensils, toys and sporting goods, picture molding
and frames, grille and fretwork, excelsior, clothes-pins, matches,
tooth-picks,--all these are mowing down our forests by the thousands of
acres.

The lumber cut includes all kinds of both hard and soft woods. A very
large percentage of this is of yellow or southern hard pine, of which
several billion feet a year are used.

An almost equal amount is used for hewn cross-ties for railroads and
trolley lines. Many sawed cross-ties are included in the item of lumber.
The hewed cross-ties are made from young oak-trees, or from hard-pine,
cedar and chestnut. Without them no more railroad or trolley lines could
be built, and the present systems could not be kept in repair. Many
other materials have been tried, but wood is the only one that has ever
proved satisfactory and safe for this purpose.

The next largest use of lumber is the grinding of it into pulp to be
used in making paper for our books, magazines and newspapers, wrapping
papers, etc. The woods used for this purpose are mostly spruce and
hemlock. The great sources of supply of pulp-wood are Maine and
Wisconsin, and large amounts are imported from Canada, which greatly
lessens the drain on our own forests.

Next in importance comes cooperage stock for the making of barrels. When
we consider the many uses of barrels,--that vinegar, oil, and liquors
are all shipped in tight barrels, which are mostly made of the best
white oak, and that flour, starch, sugar, crackers, fruits and
vegetables, glassware, chemicals, and cement are shipped in what are
called slack barrels, made of various hardwoods, the hoops being always
of soft elm, a wood which is rapidly disappearing, we can see the size
and necessity of this industry.

Round mine timbers, largely made of young hardwood trees, are used to
support the mines underground. Mining engineers say that on an average
three feet of lumber are used in mining every ton of coal taken out.
Assuming that 450,000,000 tons of coal are mined each year, this would
mean that almost a billion and a half feet a year are used in the coal
mines, and this is about the amount shown by the government report.

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