direction. Lands which were little valued be cause of their remoteness from centres of popu lation, become of great value as population spreads from its centres, or new centres are established. The opening of canals and of other waterways, the building of railways, and the improvement of country roads break down the advantages possessed by the lands immediately about the markets, and add to the resources of the community by rendering all good lands more readily available. The chief original distinction between good and indifferent lands is based not always on any real differences in their capacity to yield useful products, but often rather on differences in their location, their accessibility, and their capacity to produce those few commod ities that are originally most in demand. These latter differences are of the kind that disappear rapidly when population increases, transporta tion facilities are introduced, and wants are di versified. The general effect of such progress is therefore to equalize the productivity of differ ent areas. In other words, the productive power of land depends chiefly on the character of its population.
A large part of the expenses of agricultural production are due to the initial obstacles. There are certain permanent expenses of pro duction in agriculture as in other branches of industry. But in a progressive community there are others of a temporary character made necessary by the obstacles, some of which were referred to in a preceding paragraph. It is for this reason that the price of food is relatively higher in a new and progressive country. Ex tensive methods of cultivation, using up reck lessly the productive qualities of the soil, may for a time conceal the real conditions, but as soon as there is any feeling of responsibility for the maintenance of the soil on the part of those who are already in possession of desirable lands, and a determination on the part of others to bring new lands into cultivation, or to bring them within effective reach of the market, the special expenses connected with the overcoming of obstacles shows itself. The prices of prod ucts must rise high enough to cover not only the ordinary expenses of production, but to re imburse producers for the extraordinary ex penses caused by these -obstacles. A strong argument for collectivist action has been drawn from these facts. If society as a whole will re move the initial obstacles, and open new areas to cultivation where it can be done by digging, irrigating canals, draining marshes, etc., the yield of agricultural products may be vastly increased without the rise in prices and rents made necessary by the ordinary method. If the whole matter be left to individual initia tive, the prices of food and other products must rise to a point sufficient to cover the expense of both ordinary production and initial enterprise, and that not merely on the new products, but on all others, however cheaply produced, on the lands already cultivated.
The greatest return from the land of the nation will not be secured when it is all under cultiva tion. That there may be a conflict of interests
between society and certain of its members is shown nowhere more clearly than in the treat ment of forests. One-fourth of the land of a country, in the opinion of an eminent author ity, should be in forests. When a fourth of it has been taken under. cultivation, therefore, any further increase of product should be sought, not by the cultivation of more land, but by a more intensive culture of that which is already under plough. Forests are sometimes destroyed for the sake of the timber, but loss from the cutting down of forests for timber is insignifi cant in total amount when compared with that resulting from ruinous forest fires, the result of mere carelessness or of the lack of spark extin guishers on railway locomotives. Such fires destroy the young shoots and sometimes entirely kill out many of the best varieties of trees. Scientific forestry yields in the long run a far greater supply of timber than a reckless system of extermination, and there is the great argument in its favor, that it admits a selection for forests of those lands that are unsuited to ordinary cul tivation. The sources of streams, and, to some extent, their entire courses, including the smaller tributaries, should be protected by forests. If deprived of their natural protection, they dry up quickly in hot weather, and rains have no other effect than to cause sudden and severe inun dations rushing immediately to the sea. The total quantity of rainfall is diminished. To the forest lands gained in this way, the mountains and hillsides which are too steep or rocky for cultivation, and a considerable part of the ordi nary arable land, must be added to secure a proper relation of forest to cultivated land.
Land will not yield its greatest return when used for a single crop. Every crop has its own particular proportion of various elements of plant food, and its own peculiar physical and chemical effect upon the land on which it is grown. The elements upon which it draws most heavily, or of which there is at the outset the most scanty supply, will become exhausted long before other elements need to be replaced, and the particular physical treatment required for the crop, such as ploughing, harrowing, or drilling, repeated many times without variation, becomes injurious. When a field is thus worn out, it may be put to a totally different use, pasturing, for example, or the elements found to be lacking may be artificially restored. The land, however, may be kept to its full produc tivity, and its productivity may even be stead ily increased by a suitable rotation of crops re quiring different treatment and drawing at least partly upon different elements in the soil. Just as the human being requires a smaller quan tity of food if there is a variety of food ele ments, so land will yield a greater agricultural product if there is a judicious variety of crops.