6. Show the past and present rank of agricultural exports and imports. 7. What portion of the land area of the United States is "in farms" and what part is "improved"? Explain these terms. 8. Compare per cent of increase in population, for a series of decades, with increase in production of staple crops and live stock. Show significance of these figures (Fig. 5). 9. Show at what periods of our history we have followed the doctrines of "exploitation" and "conservation" respectively. Explain these terms. 10. According to Sir Horace Plunkett, what is the rural life problem in the United States? 11. State the conclusions of the Roosevelt Country Life Commission. 12. Show the fallacies and the true principles involved in the question of increased production of staple crops. 13. Show the significance of industrial concentration in various fields in recent years, such as lumber, banking, and railroads. 14. Compare Canadian industries as to a similar concentration. 15. What do present tendencies indicate as to the future ownership of farm lands in the United States? QUESTIONS SUGGESTED BY THE TEXT 1. Is a large increase in land values a benefit to the farmers themselves? 2. What are some reasons for and against an agrarian party? 3. What portion of the land surface of the United States will likely remain forever out of use for agricultural purposes? What are the limiting factors? 4. From the farmer's standpoint should there be an increase or a limitation of output of the staple crops? Reconcile the social and the agrarian viewpoint on the question of increased production. 5. What evidence is there, if any, of farm land ownership becoming centralized in the hands of big corporations? If corporation farming is more efficient than individual farming, should it not be promoted? 6. Give examples from your own village or city of the centralization of control over local enterprises in a few hands and explain the cause of this centralization. REFERENCES 1. U. S. Census Reports. See especially 8th Census, volume on Agriculture (1864); 10th Census, vol. iii; 12th Census, vol. v, xvi-xxxvii. 2. Report of the Country Life Commission. Edited by L. H. Bailey. 3. HAWORTH, PAUL LELAND: "George Washington, Farmer." 4. Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. x, i-lxiv (1901); vol. xix, 45-96 (1902). 5. Report of the Bureau of Corporations on the Lumber Industry (January 20, 1913). 6. BAKER, O. E.: "Arable Land in the United States, Yearbook," Department of Agriculture, 1918, 433-443. 7. PLUNKETT, SIR HORACE: "Rural Life Problems of the United States." 8. Yearbooks, Department of Agriculture: 1903 "Nation's Farm Surplus" 479-491. 1904-"Annual Loss Caused by Insects," 461-475. 1905 -"Diversified Farming in the Cotton Belt," 193-219. 1908-"Causes of Social Rural Conditions: Remedy-Small Farms," 311-321. 1909-"Farming as an Occupation for City Bred Men," 239-249. 9. WRIGHT, C. D.: "Industrial Evolution of the U. S.," Ch. 12. 10. DAY, CLIVE: "History of Commerce," chs. 51, 52, 53. 11. NOURSE, E. G.: "Place of Agriculture in Modern Industrial Society." Journal of Political Economy, vol. xxvii, 466-497; 561-577. 12. HALL, A. D.: “A Pilgrimage of British Farming," 1910-1912, London, 1913. CHAPTER II ANARCHY OF AGRICULTURE AGRICULTURE at present is an unorganized industry, carried on by millions of competing units. The man on the farm coöperates with nature, but not with his fellow-farmer. The so-called trusts and large combinations of capital have done much to integrate the other industries. Agriculture remains individualistic. Where industries have reached the monopoly stage or the stage of strong centralized control, we witness a coördination of production and consumption impossible elsewhere. Production is planned to fit the need; overproduction and underproduction are both to a certain degree avoided. This is illustrated in the case of refined petroleum. Many other large industries, without the monopoly element, yet involving the investment of considerable capital, show a reasonably close coördination of production and consumption. Take the mining of coal, for instance. Consumption needs increase as population increases, and as industrial expansion grows. Hence production of coal should increase in a constantly growing and unbroken ratio to meet this upward-moving demand. And such we find to be the case. A glance at the census figures reveals the situation: In manufacturing the same coördination is found, although not so perfect. The demand is estimated in advance, and this forecast is fairly accurate. However, competing manufacturers may overproduce or underproduce and in this manner cause supply to be out of line with demand. And, of course, in manufactured goods, we enter the field where there is more elasticity of demand, and hence more likelihood of failure of coördination of supply and demand. When we come to the field of agriculture we find the greatest, failure to coördinate supply and demand. Here we have an indus try whose product is in universal demand. And this demand,. as shown by the markets, is like the supply-not constant, but is dependent in part on fluctuating production in competing areas in foreign lands, in part on prices and uses of substitutes and alternates. Compare the two great staples, for example, cotton and wheat. In 1886 the wheat crop was four hundred fifty-seven million bushels. Ten years later, with ten million more mouths to feed in the United States, the crop was thirty-seven million bushels less. And ten years later, with another ten million mouths to feed, the crop has increased by over three hundred million bushels. Eight years later, and the crop has increased by one hundred and fifty million bushels. Cotton production shows the same enormous variations. Taking the annual yield for five consecutive years, we have the following impressive figures: An increase of fifty per cent from one year to the next sometimes occurs in the production of cotton. We may likewise compare two minor crops which .are yet staples and for which the demand is never constant, namely, tobacco and potatoes. Note the wide fluctuations in potato production from year to year in this brief table: Animals follow the same erratic course, often decreasing rapidly as population increases, and again increasing far in advance of the slow and steady increase in population. This phenomenon makes the farm output differ from the factory output. FACTORS OF UNCERTAINTY Factors of Uncertainty.-Is it possible to coördinate production and consumption of farm crops? It is impossible to forecast demand, and it is clearly impossible to forecast or control the Percent Increase 1881-1890 FIG. 5.-Forty years' progress, crops and livestock, 1870-1910. Increases or decreases by decades as compared with the population. supply. There are too many factors of uncertainty. The chief of these factors, to name but three, are climatic conditions, plant diseases, and insect pests. A great loss to the American wheat crop, as well as to the European, is often caused by "winterkilling." The winter may be too mild, too severe with no snow 2 blanket, or may alternately thaw and freeze till the wheat is killed. Late spring frosts may injure winter wheat or decrease acreage of spring wheat. Early frosts in the fall injure the wheat, as happened in 1907 and 1911 in the Northwest and in the Canadian West. Rain at harvest time, extreme heat, prolonged drouth, all may do serious damage to the wheat crop. In 1902 the Australian crop fell from 42,500,000 bushels of the previous year to 19,800,000 bushels. The 1903 crop rose to seventy-five million. This drouth had the effect of raising the price of wheat in the Pacific Coast States above the Liverpool price level. Bad weather conditions also lead to rust and smut which injure the crop seriously. Hail is an agent of destruction. Floods, as in Kansas in 1904, may destroy large areas of wheat. This same year, 1904, was known in America as Black Rust year, since the total loss due to this cause was seventy-five million bushels. What has been said about climatic conditions and the wheat crop is believed to be typical for other farm crops. And these conditions can neither be foreseen nor removed. Insects and Diseases.-Among the insect pests may be mentioned the "green bug" (Toxoptera graminum). The green bug made its appearance in 1890 and proved very disastrous to wheat and oats over a section of the country extending from Texas to Northern Missouri and eastward to Indiana. Again in 1900, and still again in 1907, this green bug appeared. In 1907 it attacked the wheat crop and almost totally destroyed the Texas crop, and seriously damaged the crops of Oklahoma and Kansas. The wheat grower also is in constant danger of serious loss from the Hessian fly, the chinch bug, the wheat midge, and the weevil. Other crops have an equal number of enemies. Bulletins from our Agricultural Experiment Stations show the great variety and serious extent of plant and animal diseases in the United States. For livestock, as well as field crops, are in constant peril of disease. For instance, one bulletin of the Wisconsin Station alone treats of the following pathological conditions and insect enemies in that State: vaccine treatment of chicken-pox in fowls; contagious abortion (described as "the greatest menace to our dairy cattle"); root killing and body canker (in orchards and small fruits); potato rot and blight; potato scab; five cabbage diseases (black rot, soft rot, yellows, black leg, club root); rust and leaf blight of field crops; barley stripe disease; alfalfa leaf spot; cottony maple scale; cutworms; onion maggots (destroying from fifty to ninety-five per cent of the crop); codling moth (apple |