On November 7, 1859, the Times of London carried a letter from John Mechi, a prominent advocate of scientific farming, warning of “the gradual but sure exhaustion of the soil of Great Britain by our new sanitary arrangements, which permit the excrements (really the food) of 15,000,000 people, who inhabit our towns and cities to flow wastefully into our rivers.” This “suicidal practice,” he wrote, would inevitably lead to “great calamities to our nation. Although by extensive purchases of guano, bones, and feeding stuff, we are trying to mitigate the evil, we are warned by that great man, Baron Liebig (the Sir Isaac Newton of agricultural science), that these attempts are but as a drop compared with what we waste.”
Redirecting human excrement from sewers to the land, Mechi wrote, is “the only profitable and available means of providing food for the people.” He appended (and the Times published) long excerpts from Liebig’s 1856 book Letters on Modern Agriculture making the same points and attributing the long survival of Chinese civilization to its collection and use of human excrement as fertilizer.
The same issue of the Times carried an editorial leader complaining that the Metropolitan Board of Works was procrastinating on London’s sewage problem: one member, A. H. Layard, received particular criticism.
Mechi sent that issue of the Times to Liebig, who was then teaching in Munich. Liebig’s substantial reply appeared in the December 23 issue, and was subsequently reprinted in other English newspapers and magazines. At the same time, the American Consul in Munich, who had helped Liebig with the translation, sent copies to the United States, where it was published by the New York Times, Scientific American, and other publications, early in 1860.
Liebig’s letter was an important contribution to the public debate on the metabolic rift that prevented urban waste from being returned to the soil. It reflected Liebig’s mature views on the subject, which were soon to be presented at length in the controversial seventh edition of his Agricultural Chemistry, a book that Marx studied carefully while writing Capital.
To our knowledge, Justus von Liebig’s 1859 letter to the Times has not been republished since, so we are pleased to provide the full text here.
MUNICH, Thursday, Nov. 17, 1859.
DEAR SIR:
Your letter of the 7th of November to the Times, furnishes me an occasion to express to you my sincere thanks for the views to which you there give utterance, and which I have labored many years to impress. I am sorry not to be able to say that my efforts have been attended with any perceptible results, and I regard it as a fortunate event that a man of so eminently practical a character as yourself has now for the first time, in the interest of agriculture and the national welfare, taken up the question of the “sewerage of towns” with warmth, and in language adapted to produce conviction. It is my ardent wish that you may succeed in awakening the English people to your own convictions; for in that case the ways and means for setting aside the difficulties which stand in the way of procuring manure from the “sewerage of towns” will certainly be found, and a future generation will look upon those men who have devoted their energies to the attainment of this end, as the greatest benefactors of their country.
The ground of my small success lies clearly in the fact, that the majority of farmers do not know the extent to which their own interests are concerned in this matter, and because the views and conceptions of most men in regard to the circuit of life and the laws of the preservation of our race, do not generally rise above those of C. FOURIER, the inventor of the phalanstery. He proposed, as you know, to supply the wants of the occupants of his phalanstery by means of eggs. He supposed it was only necessary to procure a couple of hundred thousand hens, each of which would lay thirty-six eggs a year, making as many millions of eggs, which, sold in England, would produce an immense income. FOURIER knew very -well that hens lay eggs, but he seemed not to know that in order to lay an egg they must eat an amount of corn its equal in weight. And so most men do not know that the fields, in order permanently to yield their harvests, must either contain, or else receive from the hands of man, certain conditions which stand in the same relation to the products of the field as the hen’s food does to the egg she lays. They think that diligent tillage and good weather are sufficient to produce a harvest; they therefore regard this question as one in which they are wholly unconcerned, and look forward carelessly and with indifference to the future.
As physicians, who in the apparent signs of a young man’s blooming health, discern the fatal worm which threatens to undermine his organic frame, so in this case should those discerning men who are capable of comprehending the range of the question, raise earlier the voice of warning.
It is true that the diligent tillage of the fields, sunshine, and timely rain, are the outward conditions, perceptible to all men, of good harvests, but these are perfectly without effect upon the productiveness of the field, unless certain things not so easy of perception by the senses are present in the soil, and these are the elements which serve for nourishment—for the production of roots, leaves and seeds—and which are present in the soil always in very small quantity in proportion to the mass of the soil itself.
These elements are taken from the soil in the products of the field, in the corn, or in the flesh of the animals nourished by these products, and daily experience shows, that even the most fruitful field ceases after a certain series of harvests to produce these crops.
A child can comprehend that, under these circumstances, a very productive field, in order to remain very productive, or even simply productive, must have the elements which had been withdrawn in the harvests perfectly restored; that the aggregate of the conditions must remain, in order to produce the aggregate results, and that a well, however deep it may be, which receives no supply of water, must in the end become empty, if its water is constantly pumped out. Our fields are like this well of water. For centuries those elements which are indispensable to the reproduction of the field crops, have been taken from the soil in those crops, and that, too, without being restored. It has only recently been ascertained how small a supply of these elements the soil really has. A beginning has been made to restore to the fields the loss which they sustain through the annual harvests, by introducing from external sources manures containing the same elements. Only a very few of the better informed farmers perceive the necessity of this restoration, and those of them who have the means have zealously endeavored to increase the amount of these elements in their fields; but by far the greater part of them know nothing of such restoration—they think that they may continue to take from the field as long as there is anything left, and that it will be time enough to provide for this necessity when it knocks at their doors. They do not of course know how large their stock on hand is, nor are they aware that when the necessity shows itself, there will then be no means to meet it. They know not that what they have wasted is irretrievable.
The loss of these elements is brought about by the “sewerage system of towns.” Of all the elements of the fields, which, in their products in the shape of corn and meat, are carried into the cities and there consumed, nothing, or as good as nothing, returns to the fields. It is clear that if these elements were collected without loss, and every year restored to the fields, they would then retain the power to furnish every year to the cities the same quantity of corn and meat; and it is equally clear that if the fields do not receive back these elements, agriculture must gradually cease. In regard to the utility of the avails of the “sewerage of towns” as manures, no agriculturist, and scarcely an intelligent man, has any doubt; but as to their necessity, opinions are very various.
Many are of the opinion that corn, meat, and manures, are wares, which, like other wares, can be purchased in the market; that with the demand the price may perhaps rise; but this will also stimulate the production, and that all turns upon having the means to purchase, and so long as England has coal and iron she can exchange the products of her industry for the corn, meat and manure which she has not. In this respect I think it would be wise not to be too confident of the future, for the time may perhaps come, even in half a century, that not one of those countries upon whose excess England has hitherto drawn, will be able to supply her with corn and that too, from the natural law, that what is true of the smallest piece of ground is true also of a great country—it ceases to produce corn if the conditions of the reproduction of the corn which has been carried off are not restored to it. Nor, furthermore, is it certain whether the corn-growing lands will always desire to exchange their corn for the products of English industry, since they may no longer need those products, or at least not in the ratio of England’s need of corn. In the countries of Europe, and in the United States of North America, great efforts are made to become in this respect independent of England, as being in the end the only way of keeping up the corn prices in these countries, so as to repay the labor of the people.
In the United States the population increases at a still greater ratio than in other countries, while the corn production upon the land under cultivation has constantly fallen off.
History teaches that not one of all those countries which have produced corn for other lands have remained corn markets, and England has contributed her full share towards rendering unproductive the best lands of the United States, which have supplied her with corn, precisely as old Rome robbed Sardinia, Sicily and the rich lands of the African coast of their fertility.
Finally, it is impossible in civilized countries to raise the corn production beyond a certain limit, and this limit has become so narrow that our fields, are no longer capable of a higher yield without an increase of their effective elements by the introduction of manures from abroad. By means of the application of guano and bones, the farmer of most limited capacity learns the real meaning of such increase; he learns that the pure system of stall or home-made manures is a true and genuine robbing system. In consequence of his restoring in the guano and bones but a small portion of the very same elements of seeds and of fodder which had been withdrawn from his fields by centuries of cultivation, their products are wonderfully increased. Experiments instituted with special reference to this end in six different parts of the Kingdom of Saxony, showed that each hundred weight of guano put upon a field produced 150 lbs. of wheat, 400 lbs. of potatoes, and 280 lbs. of clover, more than was produced by the same-sized piece of ground without guano, and from this it may be calculated how enormously the corn and flesh production of Europe has been increased by the yearly importation of 100,000 tons, or 2,000,000 cwt. [hundredweight] of guano.
The effect of guano and bones should have taught the farmer the real and only cause of the exhaustion of his fields; it should have brought him to perceive in what a condition of fertility he might have preserved his fields, if the elements of the guano which he has transported in the shape of meat and products of his fields into the cities, were recovered and brought into a form which would admit of their being restored every year to his fields.
To an understanding of this, however, the farmer has not yet come; for, as his forefathers believed that the soil of their fields was inexhaustible, so the farmer of the present day believes that the introduction of manures from abroad will have no end. It is much simpler, he thinks, to buy guano and bones, than to collect their elements from the sewers of cities, and if a lack of the former should ever arise, it will then be time-enough to think of a resort to the latter. But of all the farmer’s erroneous opinions, this is the most dangerous and fatal.
If it is perceived that no country can perpetually supply another with corn, then must it be perceived that the importation of manures from another country must cease still earlier, since their exportation diminishes the production of corn and meat in that country in so rapid proportions that this decrease in a very short time manifestly forbids the exportation of manures. If it is considered that a pound of bones contains in its phosphoric acid the necessary condition for the production of 60 lbs. of wheat; that if the English fields have become capable, by the importation of 1,000 tons of bones, of producing 200,000 bushels more of wheat in a series of years than they would have produced without this supply, then we can judge of the immense loss of fertility which the German fields have sustained by the exportation of the many hundred thousand tons of bones which have gone from Germany to England. It will be conceived that if this exportation had continued, Germany would have been brought to that point, that she could no longer have been able to supply the demand of her own population for corn. In many parts of Germany, from which formerly large quantities of bones were exported, it has already come to be the case, that these bones must, at a much higher price, be bought back again in the form of guano, in order to attain to the paying crops of former time.
The exportation of bones for so many years from Germany was possible only because the German farmers had less knowledge of the real nature of their business than the English, believing as they did that practice and science taught doctrines contradictory to each other, and were fundamentally different things, and that they must trust not in the laws of nature, but in recipes. Things have now changed for the better, although not to the extent to be desired, for the German farmers do not as yet generally understand the value of the element of bones for preserving the fertility of their fields, not to speak of the restoration of their former fertility; for if they all understood this, still no one could have any more bones; at all events, no more than those which he brings to market in his grain and cattle.
The prices of bones have become so high in Germany as to forbid their exportation, and if the question should be put to English commerce, whence it furnishes the English farmer with this to him so indispensable manure, the answer would produce astonishment, for this commerce has so far robbed all the inhabited parts of the earth, that the manufacturer of super-phosphate can only set his hopes upon the phosphate lime of the mineral kingdom.
In relation to guano, I have been assured that in 20 or 25 years, if its use should increase in even the same proportion as hitherto, there will not remain in South America enough to freight a ship. We will, however, suppose its supply and that of bones to continue for fifty years, or even longer—then what will be the condition of England when the supply of guano and bones is exhausted?
This is one of the easiest of all questions to answer. If the common “sewerage system” is retained, then the imported manures, guano, and bones, make their way into the sewers of the cities, which, like a bottomless pit, have for centuries swallowed up the guano elements of the English fields, and after a series of years the land will find itself precisely in the condition it was in before the importation of guano and bones commenced; and after England shall have robbed the cultivated lands of Europe even to complete exhaustion, and taken from them the power to furnish her longer with corn and manure, then she will not be richer than before in the means of producing corn and wheat, but will, from that time forth, become even poorer in these means.
By the importation of guano and bones the population has, however, in consequence of the increased production of corn and meat, increased in a greater ratio than would have been possible without this importation of manures, and this population will make upon the rulers of the State their natural demand for food.
If men do not deem it desirable that the balance between population and the supply of food be restored by means of exterminating wars and revolutions, (in which the want of food has always played a certain part,) or by means of wasting plagues, pestilence, and famine, or by emigrations en masse, then should they reflect that the time has arrived for getting a clear view in regard to the causes of the existence of the increase of population. A very little reflection will lead to the conviction that the relations of populations are governed by a great and comprehensive natural law, according to which the return, duration, increase or diminution of a natural phenomenon depends upon the return, duration, increase, or diminution of its conditions. This law governs the return of the harvest upon our fields, the maintenance and increase of the population, and it is easy to see that a violation of this natural law must exert upon all these relations a pernicious influence, which can be set aside in no other way than by the removal of its causes. If, then, it is known that certain existing relations work deleteriously upon the fields, if it can be foreseen that their continuance must bring about the ruin of agriculture, if there is but a single one of all the means which have hitherto resisted this deleterious influence and made it less sensibly felt, which can be safely relied upon to secure a perpetual fertility to our fields, and it is certain that this means, by a simple change and improvement of the existing deleterious state of things, can be obtained, then it becomes us to think whether a nation should not summon up all her intellectual and material resources in order to preserve these fundamental conditions of her welfare.
It has been maintained that the recovering of the manure-elements out of the sewers in the large cities is impracticable. I am not ignorant of the difficulties which stand in its way—they are indeed very great; but if the engineers would come to an understanding with the men of science in relation to the two purposes—the removal of the contents of the sewers, and the recovery of their valuable elements for agriculture—I do not doubt that a good result would follow. Intelligence, in union with Capital, represents a power in England which has rendered possible and practicable things of much greater apparent difficulty. I look forward with deep concern to the solution of the “sewerage question.” For if this question is decided in Great Britain without regard to the wants of agriculture, we can scarcely hope for anything better upon the continent.
Permit me to add still a few words in relation to the leading article of the Times of the same date, in which the one side of this question is taken up with great clearness, while the author of the article seems to have views not quite correct in regard to its bearings as it presents itself to my mind. The mistake into which he has fallen arises from his confounding the condition of a State with that of its population.
In the natural sciences we know nothing of a State, of its might or its feebleness. We know only of lands, their geological formation, their climate and soil, and whether the soil contains the natural conditions for the subsistence of man and beast. In places where these conditions are abundantly present, and geological circumstances do not hinder their intercourse, men cannot be exterminated. The most wasting war cannot rob a land of the conditions which nature has given, nor can peace give them to a land which wants them.
If Mr. LAYARD is disposed to answer the question put to him in the article of the Times, he will doubtless say that the decay of the admirable system of irrigation rendered the permanent maintenance of a great population in Assyria and Mesopotamia impossible. Countries may be fruitful, and become capable of sustaining a large population, when certain resisting influences, which in their unimpeded working make the cultivation of the soil impossible, are overcome by human intelligence; or when a land has all the conditions of productiveness except one, and then receives the one which it lacked. If Holland were without her dikes, which must be kept up at great expense, she would produce neither corn nor meat; the land would be uninhabitable. In a similar manner the inhabitant of the African oasis protects his grainfields by dikes against the storms of the desert, which cover his ground with a barren sand. I know that the prophets of future evil have at all times been derided by their own generation, but if history and natural law can furnish any ground whatever for a just conclusion, then there is none which stands upon a firmer basis than this: That if the British people do not take the pains to secure the natural conditions of the permanent fertility of their land, if they allow these conditions as hitherto to be squandered, their fields will at no distant day cease to yield their returns of corn and meat. Every man may picture to himself the state of things which will then gradually arise; but it does not belong to the province of natural science to decide the question whether the might and strength and independence of the nation can be maintained when this state of things shall have arisen.
Believe me, dear Sir,
Very truly and respectfully yours,
JUSTUS VON LIEBIG.
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