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About The Montgomery monitor. (Mt. Vernon, Montgomery County, Ga.) 1886-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 16, 1905)
tl«n from Japan has not yet been learned, and when President Roose velt falls to *ee It.ami demands only more Iwttle ships, as the lesson of tlie great sea fight which has Just been fought, he unfortunately diverts the minds of tlie people of tills country from facts of supreme nnd overshad owing Importance, whicli should he hunted Into the public mind us by a stroke of lightning from every victory won by the Japanese. That lesson is the profoundly Im portant fact that the Japanese man. the unit of her national strength, is tuo product of a mode of life and an environment whicli combines tlie physical strength which comes only from the rural life—from living next to nature with Hie mental activity and keennuse which come from con stant contact with his fsllowmen—tho community life. A Nation as Gardeners. The Japanese are not a tuition of farmer*, us we understand tlie word. They «r* a nation of gardeners. There Is neither isolation nor conges tion in llieir life. They dwell, the great majority of them, not in great cities, hut in closely settled rural com munities. The ranch and the tene ment tire alike foreign to the life of the Japanese. The great principle that must control 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 child, boy or girl, In the public schools should he 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 tlie conditions so well described In an article from the Hook lovers' Magazine for August, 11)01, : from which we quote the following: “While Japan Is eaunotiiulltigHsway lo rank with Christian powers us a 1° T j JU T h Vn * ° ■% Vs**' i -t J* 1 ' \ t A d. ,v \. J I' (. e fV' >», w | csssiso JTi \| 0\ W A chiosA / / 3 2~Ajl 2 ‘ UV)HI V 7 j f'' I coiuevoa J i_. - ” \ \*rs.N.r.uo ml> W<aA J {. * S. o 1 /J' wtsT • |£U V * kl o I WI " A o 1 U / rTsausrosr 'y' *c«»sv«^s NSAS|/ ' / * \ / j ° 0 \ ° C K /-v •"* J ° v r J t J \p \ 1 O V j mohimhisw ‘ A. 3 / J f L O M * n " 4 ’1 UK MllUll.K WEST. The lilack square lo the above map represent* the total area of oultlvatud laud in Japan, supporting thirty millions of agricultural people. tlrst -clues fighting nation. It Is not nog I h-itlng its fields of rice, gouge. millet i aud muji, Its groves of mulberry and I bamboo, its prloolesa plots of ten mul < mitsmuuta shrubs, unit its multi-mil- i lion gardeus of berrios, vegetables, l fruits ami (lowers. The tliouiwtmla of l patriots that have marched to tlie t frout bavo not thinned tbe ranks of tli* mightier hosts tilling the soil. ! Thirty million farmers me gathering | ample harvests in tile diminutive lleids > of Japan. Husbandry Dignified. "For twenty live conturles the Sun- t rise soverelgus have dignified Ims i biuulry as the most Important and | niest honorable industrial railing in - the empire, and now nioro than sixty •, per cent of the Mikado’s subjects till ] with lucouipa ruble skill tba limited twill tis bis islands. "The same diligent genius that ena bles a landscape gardener In Jaiwm ti> ! compass wltblu a few square yards of I land a forest, a bridge-spanned stream. < a water fall and lake, a ehuln of ter raced hills, ganlens and ehrysalithe- > mums, hyacinths, ptsuifi-* and pinks, a . beetling enig crowned with a ilwurfed conifer, and through all the dainty park uieauderiug paths, with lien' a , shrine aid there a dainty summer 1 house. has made It possible for the far-; uiers vs the empire to build tip on less than nineteen thousand square tulles ■ of anihta land tin* most remarkable | 1 agrleultural nation tin* world lias know n. If ull the tillable acres of j Japan were merged into one field, a ’ man In uti automobile, traveling at the J rate of fifty miles an hour, could skirt j the entire j»eritnetor of arable Japan I In eleven hours. Fpou this narrow freehold Japan has reared a nation of, import*] power, which Is determined to enjoy commercial preeminence over ull the world of wealth ami opportu nlty from Siberia to Slam and already, by the force of arms. Is driving froiu tile shores of Asia the greatest mon archy of Europe. Root* in the SolL The secret of the success of the lit tle Daybreak Kingdom has l**-u a mystery to many students of nations. Patriotism does not explain the riddle of Its strength, neither can commerce, nor military oqnlprnsnt, nor manu facturing skill. Western nations will fail fully lo grasp the secret of the dynamic Intensity of Japan today, ond will dangerously underestimate the formidable possibilities of tue Greater Japan the dai Nippon—of tomorrow, until they begin to study seriously the agricultural triumphs of that empire. For Japan, more scientifically than any other nation, past or present, has perfected the art of sending the roots of ita civilization enduriugly into the soil. “Progressive experts of high author ity throughout the Occident now ad mit that hi all tlie annals of agri culture there Is nothing that ever ap proached tlie scientific skill of Sunrise husbandry. Patient diligence, with knowledge of the chemistry of soil ami the physiology of plants, have yielded results that have astounded the most advanced agriculturist* la Western nations.’’ The Safe Foundation. The creation of the conditions above described under which the people of a nation are rooted to tlie soil lu homes of their own on the land, is not only good statesmanship and the highest patriotism, hut it Is the only safe foun dation for an enduring national structure. To Ignore nnd neglect this founda tion while we build battleships, equip armies and annex islands and dig Isthmian canals. Is us fatal a mistake as It would he to build u twenty-story skyscraper in Chicago without any foundation but the uiud of Lake Michigan. We need not muster out our urmles. nor dismantle our battleships nor evacuate the Philippines, nor slop work on the Isthmian Canal, but the fact remains, as clear as the sun from an unclouded sky at noonday, that tlie attention of our people as a nation Is riveted on our naval and military af fairs and sch *mea of foreign explolta tlon, to the disregard and neglect of tlie vastly more important problem of building men at home, ami creating a citizenship which will be an enduring national inundation forever, ami en larging our home markets, which will l>e 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 tlie combined manufactured product of the three other greatest manufactur ing nations of the world. England. Franco and Germany. and we con sume ninety-two per cent of our entire auuually manufactured products at home. Create Farm Homes. And If every farm in the United States were cut in two. and a new home created ou it so tluit the number of farm homes, ami tlie capital in vested in. aud labor devoted to agri culture throughout the eutire l ulled States, were thus doubled, the result would bo au enlargement of our popu-! Intion. our home market for lunuu-i fact urea, and our power ns a nation, j almost beyond the power of the imag ination to picture to the mind. It is to the development of Its vast agricultural resources ami the creation of a closely settled population of far-| men? and gnrtk* tiers, who will etilu xate the soil bv the most intensive methods, that tbe Middle West must - look If It Is to achieve Its full destiny: iu wealth, power and population. The resources of the great territory j | extending westward from the crest of, the Alleghany Mouutalua to the one hundredth meridian—the edge of the | arid region—aud from the sources of 'the Mississippi Illver on tbe north to, its outlet to the <!ulf on the south, arei so largely agricultural that it offers | j the ideal section of the earth for the I development of a nation along the lines of Japanese-development, with | a preponderating rural population. There is no other section of the world’s surface where latent agrieul , turn I reran roe* of such inexhaustible richness aud extern be yraetieaily uu dev eloped. i- For, la fact, they are undeveloped. I! We have, as yet, hardly more than e tickled the earth over this immense 4 area, e r Our Own Country. When we compare Japan, with ita dense population. Its wealth, Its rev enues, its trade und commerce, its !1 national strength, with any section of * our own country equal to it in area M and natural resources, we are amazed e at the great possibilities of future de velopment in our own country. Tlie entire population of Japan is ' about forty-five million, of which ' thirty million is a farming population, and tills vast population of thirty mil '■ lon farmers and their families is sus -1 tabled on nineteen thousand square J miles of irrigated laud. There is no 1 agriculture in Jupun but Irrigated 1 agriculture. They have learned that J water is tho greatest fertilizer known to nature, and save and utilize it with the same care that they use every other available process for the fertili j zatfou of their fields. 1 Nineteen thousand square miles is “ an area about one hundred and thirty , five miles square, and lu a square in a 1 corner of the State of Illinois, the com j partitive size of which to the rest of 1 the Suite 1s shown on tlie accompany ing map, is sustained u nation which, to the amazement of all other peoples ' on tiie earth, lias sprung to tlie front > as one of tlie greut world powers. Source of V< wer, • And the Home Acre farms or gar dens- the rural homes of Japan—are the source of that national power. Commenting on tills, the author of , the article in i lie August 1904 Hook— . lovers' Magazine, quoted from above, i says In that article:— . “From what its advanced agrlcult . nre has made Its plains to yield, Japan has fed and elotle d and educated Its multiplying masses, fast nearing the fifty million figure; it has stacked up golil in Its treasury, has created a great merchant murine,has captured a growing share of European commerce, lias already out marshaled commercial America on tlie Pacific, lias crowded its cities with roaring factories, and has given costly and triumphant equip ment to Its aggressive fleets aud regi ments. And It lias accomplished all tills out of tile profit of harvests gleaned from a farm area scarcely large enough to afford storage room for the agricultural machinery ill use lu the United Slates.” Could there U> a more striking proof of the oft-quoted words of David Starr Jordan, that:— "Stability of national character goes with firmness of foot-liold on the soil.” Comparison of Areas. Now compare Japan aud its devel opment with the possibilities of devel opment in the Middle West. Tbe area of all the islands compris ing the Empire of Japan is 147,656 square mill's; of this only 111.000 square miles Is available for agricult- I utv. for every available acre iu that i country is cultivated. The total combined urea of Wiscon sin, Illinois and Indiana is 146.1160 ' square miles, and It is safe to say that considerably more than half of this i area—probably more than two thirds— t is capable of as close a cultivation, and of sustaining as dense a popula tion per square mile as the cultivated i area of Japan. The water with which to Irrigate it 1 now runs to waste. The water which j Chicago turns into her drainage canal, instead of producing agricultural wealth bv irrigating the lands of Illi nois. produces law suits with St Louis because it runs to waste past that j city to the Gulf of Mexico. The time will come when irrigated t agriculture In the Middle West will absorb every drop of water falling within that territory. And when the Irrigation canals and the irrigated farms of the Middle West will dry up the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers. Just ns irrigation in the West has dried np Tulare Lake iu California, and is rapidly drying up J the Great Salt Lake iu Utah, the floods of tb« Mississippi and Its tribu taries will be led out through a net vork of canals, large and small, and stored in reservoirs, and every drop devoted to beneficial use, a use that will be so valuable that its value for navigation will count for nothing in comparison. It may he a great many years before this will happen, but it is certain to come. In no other way <-an the vast population with which this country will teem within a few hundred years lie provided with the food to sustain it. Japan, from her total area of 147.- (>35 square miles, of which only 19,IAMJ are cultivated, collected an annual revenue before the war with Russia )>egan of $121,433,725, and her exports amounted to $124,208,923. Tlie average population per square mile of Japan is 299.7 H, 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 oue thousand miles north from New Or leans and one thousand miles west from Pittsburg, and containing oue million square miles, If as densely populated as Japan, would sustain a population 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 in Japan, where only one-seventh of the total area Is cultivated. On the”l9,ooo square miles of land in Japan that Is actually farmed, they sustain 30,000,000 farmers. It is a safe estimate that at least one-half of the thousand mile square central sec tion of tlie Unned Htates above des cribed could lie as closely cultivated as the productive fields ’of Japan. Those Japanese Helds sustain over fifteen hundred people to the square mile. At the same rutio of population, our own tliousaud mile square central j section would sustain 790,000,000 of farming {sipulution alone. A population of over fifteen hundred to the square mile sustained by agri culture seems to tlie ordinary mind in credible; but on tlie Island of Jersey, off the English coast, a population of over thirteen hundred to me square mile is sustained by out of door agri culture in a climate by no means best adapted to intensive farming. It must lie borne in mind that we are talking now of the iiossibilities of future development, and the facts and figures above given will no doubt lie looked upon ns utterly chimerical by the average reader. Degeneracy in England. Benr in mind however, again, that they are based only upon tlie assump tion that we in flits country should at tain to a point of development already reached by the Japanese people, and on which rests their national strength. It is true that our development dur ing the last haif-eentury has not been towards the land. We have followed in tlie footsteps of England, rather than Japan; and while, in fifty years, Japan has restored tlie land to her people and rooted them to the soil in homes of their own, England has done the contrary. She lias driven her yeomanry from the farms to the cities, where they have become fac tory operatives, and degenerated physically and mentally to such a de gree that tho degeneracy of her citi zenship now presents itself to the statesmen of England as a most ap palling problem. , We are doing the same tiling, but we are not, us yet, feeling tlie offer's of it so severely because we have still a larger proportion of our people ou the laud. Back to the Land. We have much to do to reverse the tide of population, and turn it from the cities back to the laud—from the tenement to the garden. It must not be imagined that it is necessary, in order to accomplish this, that the workers in our cities or in our fac tories should quit their present em ployment aud become farmers. All that is necessary is that tlie facilities for rapid transportation afforded by our trolley system should be availed of to plant every factory family upon at least an acre of laud. Let that be done, and the problem is practically solved no matter though tlie acre be used for nothing but to raise chickens ami keep a goat. The children of tlie family will have fresh air and sunshine und pure milk, and will grow up to he healthy men and women. The lever with which we must move our population back to tlie land must be the public school system. Gardens and Handicraft. Every child in the public schools, boy or girl, must be trained from its earliest days of school life to culti vate the ground and make tilings grow in a garden, and to raise poul try, and do all that needs to he done to provide the food for a family from an acre of land. Add to this a training in simple sloyd work and home handicraft, cooking aud sewing and making things for tlie home, and you wu. have cre ated tlie impulse in the minds of tlie multiplying millions of our children which will lead them to shun tlie bricks and the asphalt, the slums nnd the tenements, as they would shun the plague, and tlee from them far enough into the country to have an acre at ieast for a home and a gar den. Create this impulse in the minds of our children, the millions upon mil lions of them who are attending, and will attend, our public schools, and they will find away to solve all the rest of the problem, liow to get the land, nnd how to get hack and forth to it, if they continue to work in the city or the factory. Some will say that school gardens cannot be provided for city children That is a mistake. 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There i should be a short winter term, dur • iug which the time should be given to i instruction from the books and in ■ handicraft within doors. t There should be a summer term of equal length during which the schools i would lie transferred to the suburbs, t and work in summer school gardens. • The children should be taken back and forth to these summer school gar ■ dens at public expense, as they’ are I now taken to and from the cousoli- I dated rural schools on the trolley lines in some of the New England i states. The vacation, which would not need i be so long, should be divided betwen a ■ spring vacation und a fall vacation, ■ intervening between the winter city erm and the country summer term or each school. Building a Strong Citizenship. Os course, many will bold up their hands and say this is impossible. England finds it impossible, as the ■ result of ber system of great landed estates, to provide her people with homes on the land, and in conse quence her ruin as a nation is only a i question of a comparatively brief i time. Japan, on the contrary, put forth ■ her band and solved the very problem which, to England, seems impossible, and behold the results in ber strength and power as a nation. It is only a question with us, as a 1 people, whether we will follow the lead of Japan, and profit by ber les sons, or follow the lead of England and share in her eventual ruin. The Influences which are destroying England are at work steadily and in- ] sidionsly 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 away 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 ing with our national problems as seems to be the fate of England. In the carrying out of this great patriotic purpose of building a strong citizenship by building rural homes on the land, we are. at the same time, doing that which will create the greatest possible commercial prosperity, and develop to the high est attainable point, not only the re sources of the Middle West, but of our entire country. The Olive la America. The annual output of olive oil in California is about 150,000 gallons; of pickles 250,000 gallons. The imports to the country of oil amount to about 1,250,000 gallons per year and of pickles to 2,116 gallons. 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