We cannot spare all this land from tillage. But fortunately, there are
other ways of using it. Land east of the 100th meridian may be divided
into three classes: First, which in the absence of better estimate
covers one third of the area, is hopeless for agriculture because of
hills and rocks. This is mostly now in rather poor forests. The second
class, also covering one third--by the same estimate--has been cleared
for agriculture, but is so hilly and eroded as to be in a low state of
fertility and production. The third class, the remaining third of the
land, is suited to the plow and should be plowed and cultivated much
more intensively than it now is.

For the first and second classes of land we need a new type of
agriculture, the crop-yielding trees. Our agriculture, which depends so
largely now upon those members of the grass family which we call grains,
is the result of accident, not the result of science. At the dawn of
history man had practically all of these small grains, which have
probably resulted from the selection and seed saving of the primitive
woman, as the race came up from savagery into agriculture. This
primitive woman in selecting plants for her garden and little field, did
not pick out the best of nature, or the most productive, or the
ultimately most promising; she picked annuals because they gave the
quickest return. And man has left alone and practically unimproved for
all these thousands of years nearly all the great engines of nature, the
crop-yielding trees, such as the walnut, hickory, pecan, acorn yielding
oak, chestnut, beech, pinenut, hazel, honey locust, mesquite, screw
bean, carob, mulberry, persimmon, paw-paw, etc., because their slow
growth has deterred us from any attempts at improving them. We have
depended upon and greatly improved the quick growing grains, which spend
most of their short life in putting up a frame work which promptly
perishes; whereas the tree endures like a manufacturing plant. Further
than this, most of the grains have a period of crisis, during which they
must receive water or the harvest is almost a failure. Thus corn must
within a short period receive moisture, or it is too late to produce
even husks.

Yet trees are the great engines of nature. The mazzard cherry tree,
growing wild throughout the southeastern United States, often yields
twenty bushels of fruit. Fifty bushels and upwards are often obtained
from the mature apple trees. The walnut yields its bu