s efficiency by actual
tangible results. A farmer may be so superstitious as to begin nothing on
a Friday, nor butcher during a waning moon for fear his meat will shrink,
nor use an iron plow for fear it may poison the soil! But when his
neighbor by modern methods adds 50% to his crop, he knows there must be
something in it. The new _theory_ he always greets with "I don't believe
it!" but the knock-down argument of facts compels his reluctant faith.
Soon he gives the new heresy a trial himself; and success makes him a
convert to the new gospel.

An experience like this is a serious thing for a hide-bound conservative,
long wedded to old methods. It means that "the former things are passed
away and behold all things are become new." He loses his superstitions as
he discovers the laws of cause and effect. He gradually concludes that
farming is not a matter of luck but largely a matter of science; that it
is not merely tickling Dame Nature till she grudgingly shares her
bounties, but that it is a scientific process, the laws of which may be
discovered. This means mental growth for the farmer, the stimulus of many
new ideas which bring wider horizons and a larger life; and incidentally a
heightened respect for his own life-work.

_What is Progressive Agriculture?_

The old-fashioned farmer, particularly in America where methods have been
so wasteful because of the cheapness of land, has planted and harvested
just for the season's returns, with little regard for the future. The
modern farmer, self-respecting and far-sighted, plans for the future
welfare of his farm. He learns how to analyze and treat his soil and to
conserve its fertility, just as he would protect his capital in any
business investment. Scientific management and farm economy are taking the
place of mere soil-mining and reckless waste. The best farmers plan to
leave their farms a little more fertile than they found them. Good
authorities in rural economics assert that if depletion of soil fertility
were taken into account, the wasteful methods of American agriculture in
the past, though producing apparently large returns, have actually been
unprofitable. So long as new land could easily be obtained from the
government for a mere song and a few months' patience, the pioneer farmer
was utterly careless in his treatment of the soil. He moved from state to
state, skimming the fat of the land but never fertilizing, following the
frontier line westward and leav