"Finally, land-plaster and quick-lime, still more powerful soil
stimulants, are often brought into the system to bring about a more
complete exhaustion of the soil reserves, and lastly the use of
small amounts of high-priced commercial fertilizers serves to put
the land in suitable condition for ultimate abandonment."

"Do you mean that commercial fertilizers injure the soil?" asked Mr.
West.

"Well, to some extent they injure the soil because they tend to
destroy the limestone and increase the acidity of the soil, and also
because they contain more or less manufactured land-plaster and thus
serve as soil stimulants; but the chief point to keep in mind
concerning the use of the common so-called complete commercial
fertilizer is that they are too expensive to permit their use in
sufficient quantities to positively enrich the soil. Thus the farmer
may apply two hundred pounds of such a fertilizer at a cost of $3.00
an acre, and then harvest a crop of wheat, two crops of hay, pasture
for another year or two, plow up the grounds for corn, apply another
two hundred pounds for the corn crop, follow with a crop of oats,
and then repeat. He thus harvests five crops and pastures a year or
two and applies perhaps four hundred pounds of fertilizer at a cost
of $6.00.

"As an average of the most common commercial fertilizers sold to the
farmers in the Eastern and Southern States, the four hundred pounds
would add to the soil seven pounds of nitrogen, fourteen pounds of
phosphorus and seven pounds of potassium, while a single
fifty-bushel crop of corn will remove from the soil ten times as
much nitrogen, five times as much potassium, and nearly as much