that in the West, where dry land and irrigation farming are carried on, the much higher annual percentage of sunshine than in humid sections stimulates all plant growth to the greatest possible extent wherever such conditions as soil fertility and moisture supply are made favorable.

Soil. The type of soil, though an important factor in the choosing of crops, to be grown on it, is, however, less likely to influence the larger, geographical distribution of farm crops than their location on the individual farm. For the average farm includes usually a variety of soils so that with careful planning different fields can be given up to crops especially suited to the conditions they present.

Thus a stiff, heavy clay or silt will naturally be reserved for grass and grain crops while a lighter, sandy loam will immediately be chosen for corn, potatoes, beans or some such cultivated crop. Of course the most acceptable type of farm soil-a rich, deep, friable loamwill suit and permit a good growth of practically any crop, so the aim of the good farmer is to bring the largest possible acreage into a condition approximately this as nearly as possible with the least delay.

Care should be taken in planting grain and other seed crops on soils abundantly supplied with nitrogenous plant food, since on such their tendency is to develop a growth of straw and leaf surface disproportionate to the seed crop and often so weak as to cause them to "lodge" or break down and mat on the ground. Such crops as hay and other forages, cabbage, silage corn, sugar-cane, and flax and hemp grown for fibre rather than seed, on the other hand, require plenty of nitrogenous stimulus for a maximum growth of tissue.

In the case of soils obviously deficient in plant food or in poor physical condition, it is generally better policy to raise soil-building crops less valuable, perhaps, in themselves rather than more valuable and, as a rule, more exacting sorts. Buckwheat, for example, has won a well-deserved reputation as a "poor soil crop and the first to be planted in subduing newly cleared territory. Field beans are also satisfactory yielders on land that might fail to even pay the expense of cultivating other crops. In contrast to these is tobacco, for which the soil must be carefully picked and equally carefully fitted in every particular.

The successful cultivation of many farm crops is definitely influenced by the degree to which a soil is acid, that is, deficient in lime. While a few species such as beans, corn, flax, rye and millet have been shown by experiment to be practically indifferent to an application of lime to a soil of average quality, practically all others exhibit a distinctly favorable reaction to such treatment. Kentucky blue grass, most of the clovers, and alfalfa are particularly susceptible to acidity, but the soy bean and the peanut are reported by scientists to be able to successfully withstand it to a considerable degree.

Poor drainage is another and a very common weakness of otherwise satisfactory farm crop soils. Water standing near the surface of a soil causes the development of a shallow root system. Then, when the water level sinks in midsummer, the crops are unable to reach it and consequently suffer from an insufficient

supply. Rice, which is largely grown according to a system of flooding in the course of which it remains submerged for days at a time, is a striking example of a type of crop unusual in its ability to stand "wet feet,"

Of the more widely distributed crops, alsike clover and red top grass may be mentioned as satisfactory substitutes for other clovers and blue grass and timothy which do not thrive on moist, heavy soils that tend toward acidity. The fact that no crop can suffer as a result of good drainage while many are seriously impeded and injured by a lack of it is ample reason for any farmer installing drains at the first opportunity whatever the crop to be grown.

Labor.-A steadily increasing shortage of farm labor, improved methods whereby crops can be raised by machine rather than man power, and farm implements and sources of power with which such methods may be perfected have, fortunately, developed more or less simultaneously during the last quarter century. Consequently nearly all the important farm crops can now be grown with less man power per acre than ever before, provided the work is done on a sufficiently large scale to justify the employing of the labor saving machinery. Nevertheless the concentration of the labor required by certain crops, whether it be man power or machine power, involves certain problems that must be taken into account in deciding which crops and how many shall be raised on any one farm.

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The small grains, for instance, require intensive labor at planting time, harvest time and threshing time, but little or none between. Corn, potatoes, sugar beets and cotton examples of crops that require constant summer cultivation as well. The root crops and cotton, moreover, call for both early thinning or "chopping," and also harvesting that can be done only by hand, or at best with hand tools.

Hay crops, on the other hand, may be raised for several years at a cost of one soil fitting and seeding and one or more annual cuttings, mainly at times when other crop or farm work is not pressing. Furthermore, a grass seeding can often be made part of the sowing of a small grain crop to be harvested the year before the first cutting of hay is made.

In the case of alfalfa a favorable location and season may combine to keep a farmer harvesting and curing hay crops throughout a good part of the season. Tobacco involves not only the various tasks of field culture but also the exacting and more or less tedious work of growing the plants in seed beds and planting them out in the field later on. Again, hemp calls for the heaviest and most continuous effort during the preparation and cleaning of the fibre after the crop has been cut.

Consequently the small farmer who must depend mainly on the labor of himself and one or two helpers and limited machinery should avoid a combination of crops of which the busiest seasons correspond or even overlap. Winter rye and winter wheat offer special advantages in that they involve plowing and seeding in the fall and leave the farmer free in the early spring to make preparations for other crops. On the other hand, alfalfa and grass crops may be fitted into a farm schedule either as spring or late summer sown crops.

In some cases the farmer may find it best

to complete the handling of a crop all at one time as in the case of corn silage; in others it may be advisable to simply harvest and store it (like wheat, oats, rye or buckwheat) to be threshed out under cover during the greater leisure of midwinter. Hay, too, may be baled for sale in the field, or stacked or stored in a barn to be baled and shipped later in the season if necessary. The problem in any case is to take into account all the conditions that make a crop easy or difficult to grow, both by itself and in relation to other crops, and in regard to local and contemporary conditions.

Shipping. Market demands and shipping facilities are local problems that must be taken into account by each farmer as his observation and common-sense dictate. Proximity to a large market usually means high priced land, which in turn necessitates crops of relatively high value, although in general farm crops are none of them valuable in the sense that vegetables, flowers, small fruits, etc., are profitable for suburban cultivation. Consequently the problem in most farm sections is one of advantageous shipping facilities rather than one of immediate and nearby sale. Bulky crops such as hay, cotton, sugar-cane and, to a less extent, potatoes are obviously less suited to a location involving a long wagon haul to the railroad or market than are grains, seeds, etc. Many crops, of course, are most advantageously and profitably utilized as feed for livestock and marketed as beef, pork or dairy products. In this connection also there must not be lost sight of the fact that in this way there is kept on the farm a large amount of plant food, in the form of manure, that would otherwise be sold off the place and have to be replaced ultimately by purchased manure or fertilizer. Thus the type of farming followed influences not only the choice of crops grown, but also the maintenance of the fertility of the soil and through that the ultimate possibilities and success of the whole business of the farm.

A

E. L. D. SEYMOUR, Associate Editor, The Country Life Press. FARM AND FARM PROBLEMS. "farm" is, both in the usage of the United States census and of popular speech, the generic name for any agricultural plot. All separate tracts of land, regardless of size, products or income derived therefrom, which require for their management the services of at least one person during the greater part of the year, are "farms." The terms "plantation" and "ranch" are widely used in the South and West respectively, and will probably continue to be so, long after these regions have ceased to be differentiated agriculturally from the rest of the country.

A "farmer" is one who farms. And it is common to speak of "the farmer," meaning the farming class as a whole. There is little, however, to justify such a usage, for there are many and widely divergent types of farming and classes of farmers. The various forms of occupation in industry and commerce are not so regarded merely collectively, and the usage in relation to the farmer has led to misconception and misdirected policy.

The "farm," the "farmer," and "farming," or agriculture" and "rural life," in general, have, in spite of the elaborate publications of

the Federal and State governments, and the long-continued and widespread discussion of the "rural problem," received no such comprehensive or discriminating attention as have other aspects of the national economy. Agricultural data do not include the numberless city and village "gardens" with their vast production of vegetables, fruits, flowers and poultry. Fair comparisons with industry are impossible, though such have been repeatedly made and given widespread publicity, too often to the detriment of rural industry and country life.

Even the general statistics of the United States census, however, are amply sufficient to show the outstanding importance of agricultural industry, its steady progress and general prosperity; the social and political importance of the farming class: in general, its leading place as a factor in the national life and in nearly every national problem.

Relatively little attention has been given to comparative study of our rural life with that of Europe and other parts of the world. This remains a real need, both that standards of comparison may be arrived at, and that some of the unique conditions and problems of our agriculture may be appreciated. The more thorough our knowledge of American agriculture historically, comparatively and internally, the more likely is the resultant attitude to be a general, but well-founded, optimism rather than the modified pessimism which seems to have become traditional.

The American farm and farming have many distinctive features, and the farmer very unique conditions and problems. He has shown almost incredible power of adjustment in the pioneer and homesteading stages of the past, and may well again show his accomplishment in the present period of even more marked and complex changes. With various traditions, different nationalities and even races, widely different regional conditions, great and rapid stages of development, such as only a vast virgin continent affords, American agriculture has been a "melting pot" out of which there is only now appearing the form of a system that may be called typical. The upper Mississippi Valley perhaps makes the nearest approach to this in its extent of operations, the employment of machinery, its emphasis of tillage and the forms of its institutional life.

Regional and Other Differences. There is still, however, wide regional difference which makes it difficult to describe the American farm and farming in any general way. The Northeastern States owe their systems to the transplanting of English individualism and its grassfarming. The agriculture of the Southern States has been profoundly influenced by the aristocratic and feudal traditions, which combined with slavery and the climatic conditions making cotton the central crop have made it almost a separate economy. These traditions persist in spite of the vast changes effected by national development and the Civil War. Less fundamental and permanent have been the Spanish ideas which have had some effect on the West and Southwest. And much less widespread, but important nevertheless, have been the Germanic traditions of the Middle Colonies and later in the Middle West: the influence of irrigation agriculture, especially of the Mor

mons.

Still, the isolated "farmstead" or "homestead," miles distant from village centres, may be said to be typical as compared with that elsewhere in the world. The average farm acreage, too, approximating to the original "homestead" of 160 acres, is also characteristic, in contrast with the peasant holdings and great estates of Europe. This "isolation" of the farm homes is accompanied by the dispersion of rural schools and country churches and again forms a striking contrast to the communal organization of European agriculture.

The representative American farm, too, is laid out on the rectangular system, as a result of the original survey. Except in the Northeast and older parts of the South it does not follow the lay of the land, having been traditionally accommodated to the relatively flat and homogeneous prairie country. The fields are also rectangular rather than in the strips so noteworthy abroad, and, though differing in size from 10 acres to 30 acres, depending on the region and type of farming followed, are characterized by their extent and adaptation to machinery. Public roadways are more abundant than in Europe, in general, the farm having a highway on two sides. The cultivated fields are close-in, pastures and wood-lots more remote from the house and barns, which are typically toward the highway side of the farm. The whole lay-out evidences response to our conditions, with traces, however, of traditional usages.

The

Farm Buildings. The investment in farm buildings (15 per cent in 1910) is relatively smaller than in older countries, but is steadily increasing. The requirements have undergone and are still undergoing great changes, due to the increased use of machinery, the keeping of more and better stock, superior methods of preparing and using feeding stuffs, and also to the development of fire insurance. farm-home has undergone less radical changes. The chief tendency evident is to bring the buildings to the centre of the farm, thus emphasing convenience and economy rather than the social aspects so prominent in the arrangement of the older States and older countries. The many separate buildings, erected on the place from time to time with changes in farm methods, also show signs of being brought together, reducing the number and organizing a few for a great variety of uses. The laborer's cottage is coming to be a part of the farm group of buildings; the new style feed lot; the windmill or pumphouse with underground water supply lines; the planting of trees for shade and windbreak; the beginnings of elimination of the old style fence and fencing in general: all are phases of the reorganization of the American farm.

Types and Tendencies.— “Diversified farming" requires the greatest skill in such reorganization, and the changes are most noteworthy where this develops, but the simple organization of the old style Southern plantation, as well as the small New England farm, are also being adapted.

The one-family farm of tradition is also passing. More farmable and manageable areas suited to latter-day conditions are being rapidly differentiated. New types of farm-units are appearing which will relieve the struggle for existence which many American farms have

been experiencing because of too rigid adherence to the traditions. Present-day processes are greatly modifying not only the size of the farm but its internal organization and external relations.

There is undoubtedly to be an increasing place for the very small farm. These small and intensively tilled farms will necessarily be near centres of population where the farmer can handle his own market; and where he will produce high class specialties. Such farms are ideal, but although they give great economic independence, they also require great executive skill. Popular fancy has indeed over-appreciated this opportunity; many city people have come to grief in such experiments; and it has been the goal of most "back to the land" schemes.

Another type of small farm, much more common, and characteristic of our conditions, is the one-man farm, where the owner does the work himself (and his family) with little equipment. These are generally on low-priced land, and devoted to the universal staples, risk being reduced to a minimum. This narrow and traditional type of farming seldom produces the best results for the individual or for the community.

Still another type is the representative farm of 160 acres, which is managed with comparatively little outside help, but where the soil is good, the equipment ample, live-stock is kept and relatively little land maintained in tillage. Skill in "management" makes these profitable, and results in a prosperous and successful farm.

Both the "plantations" of the South and the "bonanza farms" or "ranches" of the West are being disintegrated. And throughout the country, while the average acreage per farm steadily decreases, the representative farm meanwhile continues large. In some regions consolidation is active; in others, subdivision. Both economic and social purposes are being. realized in this process: a sufficient acreage for most profitable farming under our conditions and a means of retaining "on the land" the oncoming generations of the farm families.

But this necessarily involves a more "intensive agriculture," The "making of a farm" has been succeeded by the "producing of crops" and is now being replaced by "marketing" as the cardinal farm problem. In the past, American agriculture has been controlled by the ideal of "bumper crops." Now, the farmer is realizing, under leadership, that the crop must be "worth what it costs." The days of cheap and rich land are past.

Present conditions and tendencies are indicated by the general statistics of agriculture presented in the census of 1910. These showed 6,361,502 farms with an average acreage of 138.1, of which 75.2 acres was improved land. The acreage increased only 48 per cent since 1900. The value of farm property (total value $40,991,449,090) had risen 100.5 per cent in the decade, and that of land alone from $15.57 to $32.40 per acre.

These figures show the wide opportunity for more intensive farming, as well as its necessity, with the practical exhaustion of new lands, and the rapid rise of values resulting from increased productivity as well as speculation. They also

indicate that the American farmer is still essentially a "cheap land" farmer.

The population data of the same census also show that the rural population (49,344,883) increased by only 11.2 per cent while the urban increase for a corresponding population (42,623,383) was three-fold (34.8). This represents the climax of a long process of "rural depopulation" as the result of unsatisfactory economic and social conditions.

For while great progress has been made in American farming and farm life from colonial days to the present, and the United States Department of Agriculture, as well as the semiofficial Country Life Commission (1908), can announce a "general prosperity," yet conditions have always been, alike in the oldest as in the newest parts of the country, not wholly desirable, and the contrast with city and industrial conditions growingly close and apparent. The country never has lost as a whole, although different States and localities have. On the contrary there has been a steady and wholesome gain in population. But the great "agricultural shift from East to West, along with some movement from the farm to the town and city, has had correlated with it certain elements of "decadence," both economic and social. And these have been sufficiently intensive to give rise, in certain times and places, to "agrarian discontent, often approaching violence, and at last finding expression in political activity, and to occasion the rise of a "rural problem" throughout the country.

The end of an epoch in American agriculture and rural life was reached with the practical passage of the free land frontier in the years after 1890. The acreage of farm land which had doubled from 1860 to 1900 increased by less than 5 per cent in the next 10 years. The cities continued to grow; the demand for agricultural products both at home and abroad increased. "Rural depopulation" had to be corrected and the era of "intensive farming" entered upon.

An early sign of the new order is the disappearance of the agricultural "belts" which had characterized our "exploitive agriculture" of the past. The South is steadily diversifying its crops; the West is passing from the condition of range country; stock-raising is spreading; dairying and horticulture are being found in all parts of the country where general opportunity offers. A great variety of agricultural specialties are appearing locally. The areas devoted to different crops have been greatly extended.

There has been an especially noteworthy development associated with the rise of vast urban markets. In the vicinity of all the large cities "market gardening» has become a most profitable branch of agriculture and represents the climax of intensive culture. And not less remarkable is the use of “truck farming," carried on in places remote from markets, producing the greater proportion of vegetables consumed in cities from 500 to 1,000 miles distant. The South Atlantic States are particularly interested in this industry.

The great growth of the cities has also been responsible for the rise of a new and effective type of dairying. The milk and other dairy products for cities are produced not only in the immediate neighborhood but often in

regions quite distant, by the aid of the new system of creameries, and elaborate arrangements for transportation. Certain States (New York, Iowa, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Arkansas and Ohio) have become leading "dairy States," and already dairying is the chief industry in a number of States. The use of the silo has been an important aid in this development, as well as is the new stock-raising in general. Dairying has as yet received little development in the South, but beginnings are being made.

But the most notable, and certainly the most fundamental change, has been in the development of "animal husbandry." The live-stock industry spread west with the opening up of the country and to-day remains quite strongly localized in the West and Middle West. These, however, are not the regions necessarily the best adapted to it, nor will it permanently remain there. Its localization is the result of the presence of the "public range" and the "corn belt." The development of "stall-feeding," with the "concentrated foods," gave the Mid-West the advantage over the region of better "grasses>> and water-supply, but this region is learning to produce its own foods. The East and South are already beginning to see the spread of the live-stock industry.

Nor are we any longer bound so closely to a fruit-belt as in the past. Fruit growing has escaped the small "orchard," as a mere subdivision of the average farm, and has became a business by itself. The most marked departure of recent years has been its extension on a large scale in Georgia, Texas and the Southern States. A rapid growth of fruit growing on a large scale in the new lands of the Northwest is also proceeding. Systems of transportation, refrigeration, storage and marketing have been worked out and the manufacture of fruit in "canneries" has grown to large dimensions.

Other forms of special agricultural industries, such as the breeding of animals, fruit culture, poultry raising and bee-keeping, have also made great progress in recent years. Already these minor crops and products outrank collectively and even in some cases individually the staple field crops. The centre of gravity of American agricultural production is plainly shifting with the rise of a more intensive agriculture. Diversification also involves more varied and complex system of "crop-rotation," which in turn enables labor and equipment to be more economically managed and allows of their freer use, thus enlarging the sphere of "farm management" and developing farm "leadership."

From its aboriginal and pioneer state, American agriculture has had a relatively short, but rich and eventful, history. Some agricultural progress had been made before the coming of the whites, and the first settlers profited by this. Corn was from the first a staple, as it had been for the Indian. But the forests made progress slow, and for two centuries the superabundant natural resources failed to bring any great increase in the products. As late as 1845 our farms did not produce enough wheat for our bread. The period 1830-60 was however revolutionary, in the rise of markets, better transportation giving access to them; the use of farm machinery; improved live-stock; and the rise of the agricultural fair. Later developments have been merely an extension along

these lines. The opening of the Mississippi Valley, both north and south, to agriculture gave the industry the general form which it maintains to-day. Other grains than corn were produced early, but only in the West did it become one of the great crops. Live-stock was produced everywhere, but only found its full development in the new West. Tobacco, early grown and for export, gave place to cotton as the alluvial lands of the lower Mississippi were opened up. The wool industry received its first impetus from the introduction of the Merino sheep, but has achieved its greatest success in the new Northwest. The sugar cane was introduced in the middle of the 18th century in Louisiana, and soon developed a successful manufacture of sugar, finally producing onehalf of our domestic supply. But about 1900 the sugar beet industry, begun in Colorado, Michigan, California and other States, began a rapid rise (doubling the number of factories 1900-14) and is rapidly becoming capable of supplying the entire demand. Rice is now grown, profitably and widely, especially in Texas and Louisiana, and is capable of great extension. Many varieties of tropical and subtropical products are being grown in Florida and California, but this is only in its beginnings. Immense orchards are appearing in the new States of the Northwest.

As a result, the United States ranks high in the production of the world's staple agricultural products. Even in its present undeveloped condition it may be said to be the world's agricultural state. For here is produced threefourths of the world's maize crop, two-thirds of its cotton and one-fifth of its wheat. Export of farm products trebled in the last generation and under war conditions has grown enormously, assisted by a fundamental revision of food habits at home, but the increase is not in quantity but rather in value. It represents, too, rather extent of new land brought under cultivation, than permanent increased efficiency in farming. Cotton and breadstuffs lead, followed by meat and dairy products and animals. These have been our most successful and staple products in the immediate past, but a thoroughgoing reorganiztion of our agriculture is necessary if we are to maintain our growth and add new elements to our surplus for export. With practically one-half of the present farm area unimproved and with the many lines of leadership already entered upon, this ought not to be impossible.

Factors of Future Development.- It has been said that there are still three great opportunities in American agriculture, viz., the rice lands of Texas, the timber lands of Oregon and the new wheat lands of the Northwest. But there is opportunity, not only as here for investment in and development of new lands, but in all parts, even in the oldest States, in fact, wherever a good crop can be grown and a good market can be found. This fact is at the bottom of the "back to the land" and "buy a farm movements to-day. These movements, however, are chiefly of significance as an appreciation of the real worth of country life, for it must be confessed that the opportunity of to-day can only be surely availed of by those of farming and tradition. Never was farming so difficult. It will be in those whom country life will keep on the farm, and not in those who come

to it, that the strength of the "new agriculture" will lie. The immigrant, however, is coming upon the land, and would seem ideally adapted to its future needs.

Since 1880, irrigation has been employed on a large scale in reclamation of the arid region which covers nearly one-third of the country. Already some 14,000,000 acres are irrigated and producing varied and valuable crops, as well as conducing to a high type of local life. State laws and administration in the dozen States affected, with the National Reclamation Act of 1902, have reclaimed large areas and ultimately more than one-tenth of the entire area will be under cultivation. Not only reservoirs, but pumping and artesian supplies are being used. The new ideas and practices of irrigation farming will have great influence upon agriculture in the older States and hasten the coming of intensive farming.

Improved methods of cultivation are making it possible to grow crops by "dry farming" on the portions of the arid region hitherto considered irreclaimable.

An ever more important phase of the conservation of national resources, directly affecting agricultural progress, is drainage. At least 100,000,000 acres of land, well located and rich, but wholly or partially unproductive, because in swamps or overflowed seasonably, may be reclaimed by the co-operation of private owners, aided by State and national action. Much has been done in various States, but the work has barely begun. Even "tile drainage," the need for which is very wide spread, has since its introduction in 1835 not progressed as it should. The farmer by tradition leaves too much to nature; the future demands scientific agriculture all round.

Larger returns from land already in use, even more than bringing new lands under cultivation, will chiefly characterize future farming. We may expect to see irrigation even in the humid region (where rainfall, although sufficient in amount, is unevenly distributed) brought into use, as in Europe, as insurance against drought, and as a means of increasing production. Fertilizers are rapidly coming into use where the virginal fertility is lessening owing to single-cropping or a too simple system of rotation, combined with poor tillage. Soil fertility is increasingly guarded by stockraising, and though soil making is still in its infancy here, as contrasted with Europe, yet better tillage, longer rotation series and better husbandry all round are inevitable, and may forestall the universal need for artificial and commercial fertilizer. Not only will the soil be safeguarded, but better husbandry will, as experience shows, save the stock and crops from diseases and pests, such as "cattle tick" and the "cotton boll weevil."

An industry so old and so controlled by custom as agriculture, and which has come to be regarded as characterized above all by stability, does not frankly or readily accept change. But the very foundations of American agriculture have been continuously shifting with the various stages of evolution from pioneer to well-settled condition, the movements of population, the advent of machinery, the shifting of regions of production, the rise of markets, the assimilation of foreign immigrants on the land, the adjustment of the freed negro.