They are demonstrating what has been proved in Germany and England, where some of the cultivated land has been cropped for ten centuries, that constant cultivation, if it is wise cultivation, does not exhaust the soil. In those countries, and on this old land, the crop-yield is much heavier than in this country. The soil of Europe has no peculiar characteristics to account for this better production; on the contrary, there is every reason to believe that the same methods of cultivation, which resulted there, as they will here, from the pressure of larger demands for the products of the farm, will produce the same yields in these states.
There is great force in public opinion. The demand for a “safe and sane” Fourth of July in the United States reduced the deaths resulting from the celebration of the national holiday from 215 in 1908 to 57 in 1911, and greatly limited the sale of dangerous fire-crackers and explosives. Public opinion killed the practice of rebating on the railroads of the United States, for people generally came to the view that it was wrong, although it had existed
