XI.
ORIENTALS CROWD BOTH TIME AND
SPACE.
Time is a function of every life process, as it is of every
physical, chemical and mental reaction, and the husbandman
is compelled to shape his operations so as to conform
with the time requirements of his crops. The oriental
farmer is a time economizer beyond any other. He utilizes
the first and last minute and all that are between.
The foreigner accuses the Chinaman of being always “long
on time”, never in a fret, never in a hurry. And why
should he be when he leads time by the forelock, and uses
all there is?
The customs and practices of these Farthest East people regarding their manufacture of fertilizers in the form of earth composts for their fields, and their use of altered subsoils which have served in their kangs, village walls and dwellings, are all instances where they profoundly shorten the time required in the field to affect the necessary chemical, physical and biological reactions which produce from them plant food substances. Not only do they thus increase their time assets, but they add, in effect, to their land area by producing these changes outside their fields, at the same time giving their crops the immediately active soil products.
Their compost practices have been of the greatest consequence to them, both in their extremely wet, rice-culture methods, and in their “dry-farming” practices, where the soil moisture is too scanty during long periods to permit
