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About Lake County examiner. (Lakeview, Lake County, Or.) 1880-1915 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 23, 1905)
lion from Jaium lm not yet 1mpii icnriDtl. nnd wlion Iivnlli'iit Kixtsi veil mils to po tt.niKi (IimiiiiimI only inorp buttle nliipH. nn the lrsoti of tin Kront wen IlKiit vhlli linn Inst Im-n fonjfht, ho unfortunately diverts tlx mtiKlH or tne people of this eountry from facts of supremo nnil ovorsluul owlnjt iiiiHirlnuv, vlihti should 1m huriietl Into tln public mind ns by Htroke of lightning from every victory won iiy the Jupiinee. Tlint lesson Is the profoundly tin pormnt met that the .Ijiivineso man, the unit of her national utrenirtli, Is the proiluet of n mode of life and no environment which combines the physical strength which conies only from the rural life from living next to nature with the mental activity and keenness whlcTi come from eon stant contact with Ms fellowmeu the community life. A Nation of Gardeners The .Tapnnese nre not n nation of farmers, ns we understand the word. They are n nation of gardeners. There Is neither isolation nor conges tion in their life. They dwell, the great majority of them, not in great cities. tut In closely settled rural com munities. The ranch and the tene ment nre alike foreign to the life of the Japanese. The greatprlnelple that mnstcontrol 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, nnd that every child." Ihv or girl, in the public school's should be so trained in those schools that it will know how to till such a tract of land for n livelihood. In other words, let us reproduce In this country the conditions so well doserilied in nn article from the Hook lovers' Magazine for August. I'.ioi. from which we quote the following: "While Japan is cannonadingits way to rank with 1'ltrist ia 11 powers us u nor military unulpuicnt. nor maim faeturlng skill. Western nations will fall fnllv to grasp the secret of the dynamic Intensity of Japan today, and will dangerously underestimate the formidable possibilities of the ti renter .iiu;iti-the ial .Nippon or tomorrow until thev liegin to study seriously the agricultural triumphs of that empire. For Japan, more seientltleally than any other nation, past or present, 1i:tm IM'ffeeted the art of sending the roots of its civilization ciKluruigiy into t"i soil. Progressive exorts of Mgh Author ity throughout the incident now an niit that in all the annals of ngrl culture there Is nothing that ever ap proached the scientific skill of Sunrise husbandry. Patient diligence, with knowledge of the chemistry of soil and the physiologv of plants, have yielded results that have astounded the most advanced tigriculturii-ts in Western nations." The Safe Foundation. The creation of the conditions nlove desorilod under which the people of a nation are rooted to the soil In homes of their own on the land, is not only itimxI statesmanship and the highest patriotism, but it is the only safe foun dation for mi enduring national structure. To Ignore and neglect this founda tion while we build battleships. eiiip armies ami annex isiauns ami oig Isthmian canals. Is as fatal n mistake as it would be to build u twenty-story skyscraiHT In Chicago without any foundation but the mud of Lake Michigan. We need not muster out our armies, nor dismantle our battleships nor evacuate the Philippine, nor stop work on the Isthmian Canal, but the fact remains, as dear as the sun from an unclouded sky at noonday, that the attention of our' people as a nation 1 : riveted on our naval and military af fairs and schemes of foreign exploita- I'or. in We have, tickled the area. fact, they are undovcloed as vet. hardly more than earth over this Immense Our Own Country. When we compare Japan, with Its deus population. Its wealth, ltd rev enues, lis trade and commerce, its national strength, with any section of our own country eipml to It in area and natural resources, we are amused at the great iMvsslbllitics of future tlo vclopmctit In our own country. The entire population of Japan Is alniut forty live million, of which thlrt vnilllion Is i farming population. and this vast population of thirty mil Ion farmers and their families Is bus tallied m nineteen thousand sujuare miles of irrigated laud. There Is no igrlculture in Japan but irrigated agriculture. They have learned that water Is the greatest fertilizer known to nature, and save and utilize it with the same care that they use every other available process for the fertili zation of their liclds. Nineteen. thousand sonaro miles) Is an area about one hundred and thirty- live miles sipiare, and In a square in a corner of the State of Illinois, the com parative si.e of which to the rest of the State Is shown on the accompany ing map. Is sustained a nation which. to the amazement of all other coplcs on the earth, has sprung to the front as one or. the great world powers. Hood of the Mississippi and Its trllilt tarles will be led out through a net vork of canals, large and small, and stored In reservoirs, and every drop devoted to hciicllclal use, a use that will be so valuable that Its value for navigation v. HI count for nothing in comparison. It may be a ttivat many years before this will happen, but It la certain to come. In no other way can the vast population with which thin country will teem within a few hundred years bo provided with the food to sustain it. Japan, from her total area of 117. i ..-. Riiuarc miles, of which only I'.I.inni are cultivated, collected an annual revenue before the war with Hussla began of IIJI.i:i:i.7'J.', and her exports amounted to fl.'l.-os.nj.t. The average population per sonare mile of Japan IsViiii.Vii, lnt only one seventh or her territory is ctually under cultivation. Source of Power, And the Home Acre farms or pardons-the rural lioiuot of Japan are the source of that national power. Commenting on this, the author of the article in the August I'.Ml Hook lovers' Magar.lne, quoted from alnjve, says In that article: "l-'rom what It.s advanced agricult ure has made Its plains to yield. Japan has fill and clotted and educated Its multiplyiiij; masses, fast ucaring the i c w Pi ctA ,.Jt A J3 K A V J s i t sr.i'Kx.f ,J"lltlltw""1" ; y M 1 Jl u V -t j f i ww Jl.. I- r S w..Hr.uo tnA f S A S J vJ ) I f 0 f . I - V2 ji . j c t O R 5 THE MIDDLE WEST. The bUkck equare in the above mp representa the total art-a of cultivated land in Japan, Bupportinu thirty millions of agricultural feopie. first-class fighting nation, it is not neg lecting its tieM of rice, genge, millet find mujl, its groves of mulberry and bamboo, its priceless plots of tea and mitsumata shrubs, and its multi-million gardens of berries, vegetables, fruits and flowers. The thousands of patriots thut have marched to the front hnve not thinned the ranks of the mightier hosts tilling the soil. Thirty million fanners are gathering ample harvests in the diminutive fields of Japan. Husbandry Dignified. "For twenty-live centuries the Sun rise sovereigns have dignified hus bandry as the most lmiwrtaut and most honorable industrial tailing in the empire, and now more than sixty per cent of the Mikado'u subjects till1 with incomparable skill the limited oi! of his islands. "The same diligent genius thut ena bles a landscape gardener in Japan to compass within a few square yards of land a forest, a bridge-spanned stream, a water-fall and lake, a chain of ter raced hills, gardens and chrysanthe mums, hyacinths, peonies and pinks, a beetling crag crowned with a dwarfed conifer, nnd through all the dainty park meandering paths, with here a shrine and there a dainty summer house, lias made it possible for the far mers of the empire to build up on less than nineteen thousand square miles of arable land the most remarkable agricultural nation the world has knuwu, If all the tillable acres of Japan were merged into one iield, a man in an automobile, traveling at the rate of fifty miles an Lour, could skirt the entire perimeter of arable Japan In eleven hours. Upon this narrow freehold Japan Las reared a nation of Imperial power, which is determined to enjoy commercial preeminence over all the world of wealth and opportu nity from Siberia to Slam and already, by the force of arms. Is driving from the shores of Asia the greatest mon archy of Europe. Root In the Soil. The secret of the success of tbe lit tle iMiybreak Kingdom Las been a mystery to many students of tuitions. Patriotism does not explain the riddle of its strength, neither can commerce, tion, to the disregard and neglect of the vastly more important problem of building men at Lome, and creating a citizenship which will bo an enduring national foundation forever, and en larging our home markets, which will be unaffected by any foreign complica tions or trade disturbances. The attention of our people of late Las 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 the combined manufactured product of the three other greatest manufactur ing nations of the world. England, Trance and Germany, and we con sume ninety-two per cent of our entire annually manufactured products at home. Create Farm Homes. And if every farm In the United States were cut in two, and a new home treated on It so that the number of farm homes, and the capital in vested in, and labor devoted to agri culture throughout the entire United States, were thus doubled, the result would be an enlargement of our popu lation, our home market for manu factures, and our power as a nation, almost beyond the power of the imag ination to picture to the mind. It Is to the development of its vast agricultural resources and the creation of a closely settled population of far mers and gardeners, who will culti vate the soil by the most intensive methods, that the Middle West must look if it is to achieve its full destiny iu wealth, power ami population. The resources of the great territory extending westward from the crest of the Alleghany Mountains to the one hundredth meridian the edge of the arid region and from the sources of the Mississippi Hlver on the north to its outlet to the Gulf on the south, are so largely agricultural that it offers the ideal section of the earth for the 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 agricul tural resources of such inexhaustible richness and extent He pructlcully undeveloped. fifty million figure; It has stacked up gold in its treasury, has created a great merchant marine, has captureda growing share of European commerce, has already out marshaled commercial America on the Pacific, has crowded its cities with roaring factories, and lias given costly and triumphant equip ment to its aggressive lleets and regi ments. Ami it has accomplished all this out of the proiit of harvests gleaned from a farm area scarcely large enough to afford storage room for the agricultural machinery in use in the United States." Could there lie a more striking proof of the oft-quoted words of David Starr Jordan, that: "Stability of national character goes with tiruiuess. of foot-hold on tbe Comparison of Areas. Now compare Japan and its devel opment with the possibilities of devel opment in the Middle West. The area of all the islands compris ing the Empire of Japan is 147,oo square miles; of this only ID.iKHi square miles is available for agricult ure, for every available acre iu that country is cultivated. The total combined area of Wiscon sin, Illinois and Indiana is lPi.:i10 square miles, and it Is safe to say that considerably more than half of this area probably more than two thirds is capable of as close a cultivation, and of sustaining as dense a popula tion per square mile as the cultivated area of Japan. The water with which to Irrigate It now runs to waste. The water which Chicago turns Into her drainage canal, Instead of producing agrtcult"ral wealth by irrigating the lands of Illi nois, produces law suits with St. Louis because It runs to waste past that city to the Gulf of Mexico. The time will come when Irrigated agriculture In the Middle West will absorb every drop of water falling within that territory. And when the irrigation canals nnd the irrigated farms of the Middle West will dry up the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers, just as irrigation In the West has dried up Tulare Lake In California, and is rapidly drying up the Greut bait Lake iu Utab, tlic- A Thousand Miles Square. A section of our own countrv con tained within a square extending one thousand miles north from New or leans and one thousand miles west from Pittsburg, and containing one million square miles. If as deusclv populated as Japan, would sustain a xpulatioii or .'liHi.iMHi.iHHi; but a much larger proportion of this great square In the center of the United States could bo Intensely farmed than in Japan, where only one seventh of the total area is cultivated. On the "P.i.ntMi square miles of land In Japan that is actually farmed, thev sustain ;:o,imhi,(iihi farmers. It is ii safe estimate that at least one-half of the thousand mile square central sec tion of the I'liued Stati-s above des cribed could be as closely cultivated as the productive fo lds ' of Japan. Those Japanese lielils sustain over fifteen hundred people to the square mile. At the same ratio of population, our own thousand mile sonaro central Mcetlou-rwnnld sustain 7."n,tn)0,iHMj of farmlQgjiopula,lou alone. A iMipniatfon or over llfteen hundred to the square mile sustained bv agri culture seems to the ordinary mind In credible; but on the Maud of Jersey, off the English coast, a population of over thirteen hundred to uie square mile Is sustained by out of door agri culture iu a climate by no means hot adapted to Intensive fanning. It must be Inirtie In mind that we are talking now of the possibilities of future development, nnd the facts and figure above given will no doubt U looked upon as utterly chimerical by the average reader. Degeneracy Irt I ngland. P.ear iu mind however, again, that they are based only upon the assump tion that W" in tins eoiinfry should at- 1ain to a point ot development already reached by the Japanese people, anil on which rests their national strength. It is true that our development dur ing the last hail'-century has Hot been towards the land. We' have followed ill the footsteps of England, rather than Japan; ami while, iu til'tv years. Japan has restored the land" to her people and rooted them to the soil in homes of their own. En-Iind has lone the contrary. She has driven her yeomanry from the farms to tie cities. Where they have become fac tory opera lives," and degenerated physically and mentally to such a de gree that the degeneracy of her Citi zenship now presents itself to tie statesmen of England as a most an- palling problem. , We are doing the same thiinr. but we are not, as yet, feeling the eilee-s I it so severely because we have Mill a larger proportion of our people on the land. Back to the Land. We have much to do to reverse the tide of population, ami turn It from the cities back to the laud-from the tenement to the garden. It must not be imagined that it is necessary, order to accomplish this, that the workers Iu our cities or in our fac tories should quit their .present em ployment and become farmers. All that is necessary Is that the facilities for rapid transportation afforded by our trolley system should be availed of to plant every factory family upon at least mi acre of laud. Let that ! done, a:id the problem is practically solved no matter though the acre be used for nothing but to raise chickens and keep a goat. The children of the family will have fresh air and sunshine ami pure milk, and will grow up to be healthy men and women. The lever With which We must move our population back to the 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 things grow In a garden, and to raise poul try, and do all that needs to be 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 and sewing and making things for the home, and you Wn. have (Te nted the impulse in the minds of the multiplying millions of our children which will lead them to shun tin bricks and the asphalt, the slums and the tenements, as they would shun the plague, and flee .from them far enough Into the country to have an acre at least for a home and a gar don. 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 a way to solve all the rest of the problem, bow to get the land, and bow to get back ami forth to it, if they continue to work in the city or the faetory. Some will say that school gardens cannot be provided for city children That Is u mistake. The only difll- culty In the way of It Is a mere cus torn or habit, easily modllled. The terms of school of all city schools should be changed. Then should be n short winter term, din ing which the time should be given to Instruction from the books and In handicraft wiihlu doors. Then should be a summer lertn of equal length during which the schools would be transferred to the suburbs, and work In summer school gardens. The children should be taken back and forth to these summer school gar dens at jitiblle expense, as they are now taken to and from the consoli dated rural schools on the trolley Hues lu some of the .New England sta les. The vacation, which would not need bo so long, should be dlvldeil l.etueii a spring vacation and a fall vacation, lutervt ulng between the w inter city et'iu ami the country summer term ol each school, llulldlng a Strong CIHcnMilp. Of course, many will hold up their hands and say this Is Impossible, r.uulaud lluiis It impossible, as tin' result of her system oT great lauded estates, to provide tier people Willi homes on the laud, ami in conse quciicc her ruin as a nation Is only a question of u comparative lv brief lime. Japan, on the contrary, put forth her hand and solved the very problem which, to England. Fcems Impossible, and U-hold the results lu her strength iiinl povv cr as a nation. It Is only a question with ns, ns a people, whether we will fo,.w the le.nl of Japan, and profit bv her les sons, or follow the lead of England and shaiv In lor eventual ruin The Inilucinvs which niv destroying England are at vv oi l, siend:!v ami hi I ihotmh to vv oil. if wo do ; ie great I .M.I I., 11 es or their own. as Japan has done, ami as we can do, unless we, ie as muni and as Impotent lu rleal Ing with our national problems as seems fo be the Tate of England. In the lurrying out of this great patriotic purpose of building u strong citizenship by building rural homes on the land, we are at the same tune, tlolug that which will create the greatest possible commercial prosperity, aii.I develop to the hlirh. ef titti.lt... I.I I... - . . . K .nut- nmn. noi only file ro of the Mldde West l.i.t ..r ...... couutrj. II sldiollsly ill this tuilioli. it will take longer f,.r il., our ruin, it Is sure to tome Hot timl a way to root majority ,ir our i p,. (,, , sources our entire The Olive In America. The annual output of ollvo oil in California Is about 150.000 gallons; of pickles I'.io.ooi) gniions. Tho Imports to the country of oil amount to nhout l.l'5o.ni)i) gallons per year ami of pickles to 1M Hi gallons. The ollvo was Introduced into California 1U5 years ago, which is a bad showing for use of native ollvo oil, especially when it Is acknowledged to ho the superior of al! foreign oils. EXCAVATION WORK. .With Greatest Economy uso the Western Elevating Grader and Ditcher. A Tension Indicator IS JUST WHAT THE WORD IMPLIES. It lnd!cti the state of the tension at a gUncc. Itt use mini time tAviag and easier sewing. It' our own Inrentlon and is founJ only on the White Sewing Machine We have other striking Improvement that appeal to the careful buyer. Send for our elegant II. T. catalog. White Sewing Machine Co. Cleveland, Ohio. ROAD CONSTRUCTION. Western Wheeled Scraper Co. AUKOUA, ILL. Send fur CaUlutf. PENSIONS. 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