AGRICULTURAL AND RURAL POPULATION § I. Sources of food and organic materials. § 2. Agriculture and farms in the United States. § 3. Rural and agricultural. § 4. Lack of a social agricultural policy in America. § 5. Period of decaying agricultural prosperity. § G. Sociological effects of agricultural de cay. § 7. Fewer, relatively, occupied in agriculture; use of machin ery. § 8. Transfer of work from farm to factory. § 9. The rural ex odus. § 10. The farmer's income in monetary terms. § 11. Com pensations of the farmer's life. § 12. Ownership and tenancy.
§ 1. Sources of food and organic materials. The land area of the United States is about 1,900,000,000 acres, of which 879,000,000 acres were in farms in 1910, this being 46 per cent of the total area. A very small part of the re mainder is used for residential and commercial pur poses, the rest being barren mountains, deserts, swamps, and forests. Of the total in farms a little more than one half was improved, 478,000,000 acres altogether, a per capita average of 5.2 acres; and a little less than one half was unimproved, 400,000,000 acres altogether, a per capita average of 4.3 acres. The improved land pro duced not merely food but many kinds of materials, such as cotton, wool, hides, and lumber, while much of the unim proved land was either in farm wood-lots or in rough range pasture. Of course, the kinds and amounts of produce per acre vary with the climate, particularly with sunshine and rainfall ; possibly the proportion of the area of the United States that is true desert and infertile mountain-land is greater than that of any other equal area in the temperate zones. The actual productive capacity per acre of the lands 441 of America cannot be expressed in a very helpful way as a general average per acre, but each area must be carefully studied in respect to its climate, rainfall, and possibility of irrigation and drainage. It is apparent that a very large number of economic problems must arise in connection with the land supply for food: such as problems of land-owner ship, taxation, irrigation, drainage, forestry, and encour agement or limitation of population. We are just beginning to awake to the needs in this direction. The farm-lands supply, besides food, a large part of the raw materials Fig. 1, Chapter 27. Acreage of Corn.
for many other goods, all such organic materials as cotton, flax, wool, hides, feathers, lumber, and firewood. The farm wood-lots compose about 200,000,000 acres, and the large forests, public and private, about 350,000,000 acres, a total of about one fourth the area of the country in forests, containing about one half of the lumber that the country once possessed. The economic problem of a sound forestry policy is one of the most important we have to solve.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean waters near our coasts are other great sources of food, but no statistics are available to show adequately their yield. Few of them are in private possession, and they do not appear at all in a total of " capi.
tals," yet they are more important to the nation than a large part of the land area. They are only beginning to be de veloped artificially by the propagation of oysters, clams, and fish. The development of a proper fishery policy is an eco nomic problem closely connected with that of agriculture.
§ 2. Agriculture and farms in the United States. There were nearly 12,400,000 persons in the United States gain fully occupied in agriculture in 1910, this being 32.5 per cent of all in occupations. These, together with other family members not reported as engaged in gainful occupations, constitute the agricultural population, and comprise more than one third of the total population of the country. "Agri culture" is here used in a broad sense, including floriculture, animal husbandry (poultry, bee culture, stock-raising), forestry and lumbering, and is even extended to include regular fishing and oystering.
With the exception of areas devoted to forestry on a large scale and to fishing, the industry of agriculture is pursued on the 6,400,000 farms, covering 46 per cent of the total land area of the country. Of the land in farms, a little more than half is classified as improved. The estimated value of farm property, including buildings, implements, machinery, and live stock, was, in 1910, about $41,000,000,000, somewhere near one fourth of the estimated wealth of the country at that date.