We had long desired to stand face to face with Chinese and Japanese
farmers; to walk through their fields and to learn by seeing some of
their methods, appliances and practices which centuries of stress
and experience have led these oldest farmers in the world to adopt.
We desired to learn how it is possible, after twenty and perhaps
thirty or even forty centuries, for their soils to be made to
produce sufficiently for the maintenance of such dense populations
as are living now in these three countries. We have now had this
opportunity and almost every day we were instructed, surprised and
amazed at the conditions and practices which confronted us whichever
way we turned; instructed in the ways and extent to which these
nations for centuries have been and are conserving and utilizing
their natural resources, surprised at the magnitude of the returns
they are getting from their fields, and amazed at the amount of
efficient human labor cheerfully given for a daily wage of five
cents and their food, or for fifteen cents, United States currency,
without food.

The three main islands of Japan in 1907 had a population of
46,977,003 maintained on 20,000 square miles of cultivated field.
This is at the rate of more than three people to each acre, and of
2,349 to each square mile; and yet the total agricultural imports
into Japan in 1907 exceeded the agricultural exports by less than
one dollar per capita. If the cultivated land of Holland is
estimated at but one-third of her total area, the density of her
population in 1905 was, on this basis, less than one-third that of
Japan in her three main islands. At the same time Japan is feeding
69 horses and 56 cattle, nearly all laboring animals, to each square
mile of cultivated field, while we were feeding in 1900 but 30