This eBook was created by Steve Solomon (www.soilandhealth.org) and Charles
Aldarondo (pg@aldarondo.net).
By
F. H. KING, D. Sc.
1911
By DR. L. H. BAILEY.
We have not yet gathered up the experience of mankind in the tillingof the earth; yet the tilling of the earth is the bottom conditionof civilization. If we are to assemble all the forces and agenciesthat make for the final conquest of the planet, we must assuredlyknow how it is that all the peoples in all the places have met theproblem of producing their sustenance out of the soil.
We have had few great agricultural travelers and few books thatdescribe the real and significant rural conditions. Of naturalhistory travel we have had very much; and of accounts of sights andevents perhaps we have had too many. There are, to be sure, famousbooks of study and travel in rural regions, and some of them, asArthur Young's "Travels in France," have touched social andpolitical history; but for the most part, authorship of agriculturaltravel is yet undeveloped. The spirit of scientific inquiry must nowbe taken into this field, and all earth-conquest must be comparedand the results be given to the people that work.
This was the point of view in which I read Professor King'smanuscript. It is the writing of a well-trained observer who wentforth not to find diversion or to depict scenery and common wonders,but to study the actual conditions of life of agricultural peoples.We in North America are wont to think that we may instruct all theworld in agriculture, because our agricultural wealth is great andour exports to less favored peoples have been heavy; but this wealthis great because our soil is fertile and new, and in large acreagefor every person. We have really only begun to farm well. The firstcondition of farming is to maintain fertility. This condition theoriental peoples have met, and they have solved it in their way. Wemay never adopt particular methods, but we can profit vastly bytheir experience. With the increase of personal wants in recenttime. the newer countries may never reach such density of populationas have Japan and China; but we must nevertheless learn the firstlesson in the conservation of natural resources, which are theresources of the land. This is the message that Professor Kingbrought home from the East.
This book on agriculture should have good effect in establishingunderstanding between the West and the East. If there could be suchan interchange of courtesies and inquiries on these themes as issuggested by Professor King, as well as the interchange of athleticsand diplomacy and commerce, the common productive people on bothsides should gain much that they could use; and the results in amityshould be incalculable.
It is a misfortune that Professor King could not have lived to writethe concluding "Message of China and Japan to the World." It wouldhave been a careful and forceful summary of his study of easternconditions. At the moment when the work was going to the printer, hewas called suddenly to the endless journey and his travel here wasleft incomplete. But he bequeathed us a new piece of literature, toadd to his standard writings on soils and on the applications ofphysics and devices to agriculture. Whatever he touched heilluminated.