The land area of the United States, exclusive of Alaska and our island
possessions, is a little less than 3,000,000 square miles, or an area
somewhat less than the whole of Europe (3,700,000 square miles). Of
this about 840,000 square miles, or a little more than one-fourth,
still remains in the possession of the Federal Government and
constitutes the public domain. The rest belonged to the original
thirteen states, has been given to railways or to the states for
educational purposes, or has been sold and given away to individual
settlers. The policy of the Government in the disposition of the
public domain has, on the whole, been to place it as rapidly as
possible in the hands of cultivators, and also to use it as a fund to
promote internal improvements and education. About 200,000,000 acres
had been granted to railroads down to 1871, at which time land grants
were discontinued, to secure their early construction. This policy has
often been bitterly condemned, and it has been contended that the land
should have been saved for actual settlers. It may however be said
that without such grants the railroads would not have been built at as
early a date as they actually were, and that without railroads the
land was practically worthless, as it was too far removed from any
navigable waterway to have access to a market. Moreover, the Federal
Treasury lost nothing, for the sections of land alternating with those
granted to the railroads were sold to settlers for $2.50 an acre
instead of $1.25, the customary price for the public lands.
The grants of land for educational purposes have been generally
approved. Upon such grants rests the establishment of our state
agricultural colleges.
The unique and characteristic feature of the land policy of the United
States has been the granting of land to the settler upon actual
residence and cultivation for five years. Such a grant of 160 acres 10
is called a “homestead,” and since 1862 has been made to any citizen
who is the head of a family or above the age of twenty-one years. In
this way over 230,000,000 acres have been placed without cost in the
possession of the actual cultivators. The newer public land states are
peopled by proprietors, and there has never grown up in the United
States a large class of rich land owners whose land is cultivated by a
tenant peasant class, such as exists in England and parts of Europe.
For this we must thank not only our land policy, but also the vast
extent of unoccupied land that might be had almost for the asking.
Now, however, the public lands available for agriculture have been
exhausted; practically all that remains is situated in the arid zone,
and needs systematic irrigation before it can be made available for
any use except that of grazing. There are still about 100,000,000
acres of choice land in Indian reservations, and as a consequence of
the pressure upon this resource and also because of the unwisdom of
the old reservation system, the policy has now been adopted of
dividing these lands among the Indians in individual ownership, under
careful safeguards, and of assimilating the Indians to the rest of the
population.
The exhaustion of the fertile and well-watered lands of the
Mississippi Valley has forced the later comers to have recourse to the
arid soils in the almost rainless region west of the one hundredth
meridian of longitude. The character of farming under such climatic
conditions must of necessity be very different from what it is in the
rainy districts, and the versatility and adaptability of the American
farmer is well illustrated by the development which has taken place
there. The first effort at the solution of the problem was in
irrigation, a method which had been early practised by the Pueblo
Indians, and later and most successfully by the Mormon settlers in
Utah. By 1900, according to the census, 7,539,545 acres were under 11
irrigation. While most of the work up to that time had been done by
private initiative, a demand arose for irrigation at government
expense, in response to which Congress in 1902 provided for the
building of irrigation works out of the proceeds of the sales of
public lands. Regulation and conservation of the limited water supply
by governmental authority, either state or national, is indeed
essential to the success of irrigation and will probably be the policy
of the future.
A second and even more interesting development of American agriculture
is the so-called dry-farming which is being successfully introduced
into the semi-arid regions. Carefully selected seeds and plants of
crops especially adapted to these climatic conditions are used, and
then a very careful and intensive method of tillage is followed. The
soil is plowed deep and thoroughly pulverized so that the roots can
strike down to the deeper levels and absorb all the moisture
available. Extraordinary results have already been attained, and the
region that the older geographies labeled “The Great American Desert”
bids fair to become one of the most flourishing districts in the
country.
That part of the area of the United States which has already been
reduced to private ownership is divided into 5,700,000 farms. As
almost half of the land in these farms is uncultivated, being forest,
waste land, or pasture, it is evident that there is still room for a
great increase in the agricultural production of the United States
without bringing additional land into the field. The average size of
these farms is 146 acres, which looms large indeed when compared with
the 20-acre farms of France and the 60-acre farms of Great Britain.
The difference is of course due to the difference in the methods of
agriculture and the character of the crops, the European conditions
demanding intensive cultivation while our methods are still largely
extensive.
A more important question even than the number and size of farms, from 12
an economic point of view, is that of ownership. In 1880, when for the
first time the federal census collected the statistics of farm tenure,
the gratifying result was announced that three-quarters (74.5 per
cent) of the farms in the United States were cultivated by their
owners. The last census however showed that the proportion had fallen
to 64.7 per cent in 1900, and alarm has been expressed that our
democratic conditions of land ownership are giving way to a system of
tenantry, that the ownership of our farms is being concentrated in
fewer hands, and that methods of large-scale production in agriculture
are crushing out the independent farmer as effectively as they have
crowded out the small manufacturer and retailer in other fields.
Correctly interpreted, however, the statistics seem to indicate that
the growth of the tenant class marks the endeavor of farm laborers and
farmers’ sons to establish themselves as independent farmers rather
than the fall of former owners to the rank of tenants. The great
majority of the young men are laborers, the majority of those in
middle life are tenants, while the older men are for the most part
owners of farms. There seems to be a healthy progress upward in the
advancement of wage laborers and farmers’ children, first to tenancy,
and finally, with increased ability and capital, to farm ownership.
Moreover most of the rented farms are hired by negroes, the change in
whose status from slave to tenant marks a great advance.
Another change in our farming population that has been viewed with
considerable misgiving is the movement from the farm to the city and
the decline in the proportion of the agricultural population to the
whole. Indeed the change has been startling, as the United States has
passed from a primitive agricultural stage of development to a highly
organized manufacturing and commercial stage. From 86.3 per cent of
the population in 1820 the percentage of those engaged in agriculture 13
fell steadily until it reached 35.7 per cent in 1900. Many persons
have thought that such a movement indicated the desertion of our farms
owing to the greater attraction of the cities, and the disappearance
of a healthy agricultural population. It has indicated rather a great
improvement in the arts of agriculture, whereby one person today,
working with improved machinery and better knowledge, can produce
nearly three times as much as his grandfather did. The labor set free
has gone to the cities--cities of over 8,000 inhabitants now contain
one-third of our population as compared with one-thirtieth one hundred
years ago--and there produces the thousand and one things which
contribute to our modern well-being. A smaller number can now raise
all the food necessary to feed the population; that the rest are free
to do other things must certainly be counted again, though the
conditions under which work in the factory and life in the city are at
present constructed leave much to be desired.
Writing about 1865 an eminent English traveler, Sir S. Morton Pets,
apologized for calling the United States an agricultural country;
today he would be spared this worry, for the Census of 1900 gave the
net value of products of the farm as $3,764,000,000 and of pure
manufactures as $5,981,000,000. Indeed since 1890 the value of the
manufactures of the country has been larger than of the farm products,
and the United States now ranks as one of the leading manufacturing
nations of the world. Nevertheless the value and amount of the
agricultural products are stupendous; the United States leads all
countries in the production of dairy products, corn, and wheat, and
the greater part of the lumber, meats, tobacco, and cotton which enter
into the world’s trade come from her forests and fields.
While the territory of the United States is well adapted by nature to
the cultivation of a great variety of agricultural products, as a 14
matter of fact only four branches of agriculture showed a total
product in 1900 of more than one million dollars. These were the
raising of live stock, and the production of hay and grain, cotton,
and dairy produce. The regional distribution of these products was
fairly well marked, over half of the live stock and of the hay and
grain farms being situated in the North Central States, nearly half of
the dairy farms being located in the North Atlantic division, while
practically all the cotton is confined to the southern zone; the same
may also be said of tobacco and sugar. The semi-arid region of the
West is given over almost exclusively to stock-raising. Iowa and
Illinois lead as agricultural states.
The character of agriculture in the United States, as in all new
countries, has hitherto been extensive, that is, a small amount of
labor and capital has been applied to a relatively large amount of
land, and only the cream of the soil has been skimmed off, as it were.
Where labor is dear and land is cheap this is the most economical
method for the farmer; and, although European critics have severely
criticized our system of “earth butchery,” whereby the fertility of
the soil has been exhausted by constant cropping, with no effort to
restore the exhausted properties by fertilizing, the practice has been
justified by the conditions which produced it. Already the practical
exhaustion of the free public domain has had the effect of raising the
price of lands in the Middle West, and this in turn will cause a more
careful and intensive system of cultivation. In other words, as our
social and industrial conditions approach those of Europe more
closely, we may expect our agricultural methods to do so also. One of
the most serious practical problems now confronting the American
farmer is the change from the old, wasteful, extensive methods to the
new, careful, intensive methods of farming. Those who cannot make the
change will complain of the unprofitableness of agriculture, but to
those who successfully meet the new conditions the future offers 15
much greater rewards than even the era of free land could produce.
It has been said that the year 1887 marked the beginning of a new
stage of development in American agriculture--that of reorganization--
because in that year Congress passed the Experiment Station Act. This
marked the application of the principles of experimental science to
agriculture on a more comprehensive and systematic scale than had ever
been attempted before. Stimulated by the increased activity of the
government experiment stations, the agricultural colleges have
expanded their work. They are offering practical courses to the
farmers, and in co-operation with the railroads, some of them have
recently been sending out special lecturers, with moving laboratories,
to bring the teachings of science as close home to the producers as
possible. Finally, the wonderful work being done by Burbank and others
in selecting and crossing, by travelers for the federal Agricultural
Department in securing plants from all over the world suited to our
varied climatic conditions, and by the experiment stations and
agricultural colleges in spreading the new knowledge among the farmers
and putting it into actual practice--all these departures promise to
revolutionize agriculture, and to make it, as one writer has said, a
learned profession.
The production of cereals is the most important branch of agriculture,
comprising corn, wheat, oats, barley, rye, buckwheat, and rice. Since
the building of the trunk railroads, by which the western territory
was given access to a market, the progress of cereal production has
been extremely rapid, nor does there seem to be any observable
slackening. With the introduction of improved varieties of spring
wheat, cereal production is being pushed further up into British
Canada and our own Northwest. The center of cereal production has
moved steadily westward, from eastern Indiana in 1860 to eastern Iowa
in 1900. With the practical exhaustion of unoccupied land suitable
for grain-raising in the United States, it is clear that the future 16
extension of the industry depends rather upon improvements in the
methods of agriculture than upon the addition of new lands. The very
practical problem here presented to the American farmer if he wishes
to maintain his supremacy in the world’s markets is being nobly and
successfully met by the agricultural experiment stations. They are
teaching the farmer how to increase his yield of wheat, for example,
by scientific seed selection and more careful methods of tillage, from
an average of 12.5 bushels per acre for the whole country in 1900 to
treble that amount.
Of the separate crops corn is by far the most important, representing
60 per cent of the total value of all cereals produced in 1900. Most
of the corn is fed to stock throughout the so-called “corn belt” and
comes to market in the form of pork and beef. Although corn is very
nutritious and is a favorite article of diet in this country in
various forms, astonishingly little of it is exported. The development
of a foreign market still awaits the enterprise of the American farmer
and food manufacturer.
The production of live stock is essentially a frontier industry, and
while it will probably always be carried on in the semi-arid grazing
districts of the West, which can be reclaimed for agriculture only at
considerable expense, it already shows a relative decline. Owing to
the great growth of the population the domestic demand now consumes
almost all the meat produced and the exports are declining. This is
one of the reasons for the recent rise in the price of meat. The
industry is extensive. Quite the opposite is true of the dairy
industry, which is intensive, being carried on for the most part in
the vicinity of large cities where land is expensive. The changing
character of agriculture and the fact that it is itself a business
enterprise demanding a knowledge of market conditions and business
methods is well illustrated by the nature of the dairy industry. 17
Dairies are inspected and must conform to certain standards, the milk
must be sterilized and shipped, often by special trains, to the
cities. Over a third of the butter and practically all of the cheese
is now made in factories instead of on the farm, so that it is a
question whether the latter at least should not be classified as a
product of manufacture rather than of agriculture.
Of the last of the four important branches of agriculture, namely
cotton-raising, there is not so much to be said. Owing to the
intensive nature of its cultivation, machinery has never been applied
on a large scale to its production, as was done in the case of hay and
grain. The wasteful methods that prevailed before the Civil War in the
South have been largely corrected, and the tendency to sterility of
the soil has been met by the increased use of fertilizers. The
statistics of cotton crops for the past thirty years do not indicate
any decrease in productiveness, and show that the point of diminishing
returns has not yet been reached. A peculiar and interesting feature
about cotton production is that it is largely in the hands of tenants.
The old slave plantations of the South have been broken up into small
holdings and many of these are operated by tenants, negroes and
whites, who are too poor or too improvident to buy the land outright.
The main problems connected with cotton culture are labor problems;
and the question has often been anxiously asked whether the free negro
will produce as much as the former slave. This can now be confidently
answered in the affirmative, though it yet remains to be seen whether
he can be made as efficient a producer as his white competitor. Upon
the answer to that question depends not merely the future of cotton
production, but the economic salvation of the negro himself. The
constantly expanding use of cotton goods assures a brilliant future to
the cotton-growing states of the South, for not merely is there an
assured market in America and Europe, but the primitive peoples of
Asia and Africa may be depended upon to absorb increasing quantities 18
of cotton fabrics.
Hand in hand with the heedless extensive methods of agriculture in the
past went wasteful use and even destruction of our forest resources.
The annual cut of lumber in the United States is today about forty
billion feet board measure; at this rate of consumption it is
estimated that the present available supply will last only 35 to 50
years. It will doubtless surprise most readers to learn that about
three-quarters of the annual wood cut is consumed as fuel, probably
half of our population still depending upon wood instead of coal for
fuel. The rapid exhaustion of our forest supplies, with the attendant
effects upon moisture, floods, etc., has brought the question of
forest preservation to the front as a practical economic problem. We
have been squandering the heritage of our children and efforts are now
being made to repair some of the loss before we are declared bankrupt.
In 1898 the Federal Government began practical work in the
introduction of forestry; this received a great stimulus in 1905 when
the care of the national forest reserves, embracing over 60,000,000
acres, was put under the control of the Forest Service. Over 150
trained foresters are employed, who manage the forests on the public
lands and co-operate with private owners in the introduction of
scientific forestry. Several states have taken up the movement, and
there is every indication that scientific methods of culture such as
prevail in Prussia and other European states, will supplant our
destructive denudation of the land. That it is high time to devote
attention to the better conservation of this natural resource is made
evident by the high and increasing price of lumber.
There is one other natural resource the conditions of whose supply
resemble those of forestry and of agriculture in general; this is the
fisheries. With careful use, providing for depreciation, and restoring
the elements destroyed, all of these should prove inexhaustible and 19
should continue to furnish man with food and lumber for all time. But
as in the case of the other two industries, so with the fisheries, we
have been using up our capital and declaring enormous dividends at the
expense of the future. The value of the annual catch of fish is
$40,000,000, which is exceeded only by that of Great Britain. The
problem of the better conservation of this resource has been taken in
hand by the Federal Government, through the Fish Commission, and much
has been done to repair our early prodigality by restocking lakes and
streams with fish. More stringent fish and game laws have also been
passed by most of the states, designed to prevent the extermination of
the supply.