FARM AND FARM PROBLEMS. A "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 re spectively, and will probably continue to be so, long after these regions have ceased to be dif ferentiated 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 misconcep tion 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 com prehensive or discriminating attention as have other aspects of the national economy. Agri cultural data do not include the numberless city and village "gardens" with their vast produc tion 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 agricul tural 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 re mains a real need, both that standards of com parison 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 agricul ture 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 vir gin continent affords, American agriculture has been a "melting pot" out of which there is only now appearing the form of a system that may he called typical. The upper Mississippi Valley perhaps makes the nearest approach to this in its extent of operations, the employ ment 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 North eastern States owe their systems to the trans planting of English individualism and its grass farming. The agriculture of the Southern States has been profoundly influenced by the aristocratic and feudal traditions, which com bined 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 wide spread, 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.