THE ORGANIZATION OF

AGRICULTURE

[An account of agriculture and forestry made at this time gives opportunity for a general review and a forecast of prospective developments. Since many of the statistical estimates of the United States Department of Agriculture will be revised in 1911 from the figures of the thirteenth census, it seems wiser for the most part to defer presenting many statistical tables until the new census gives a new basis.]

In the year 1910 the high cost of food has directed the attention of people in nonagricultural pursuits to the paramount importance of the productivity of the soil, while the housekeeper, the business man, and the economist have been brought clearly to realize that the world must adapt itself to more expensive food products. The steady movement away from the land so as to secure the high prices paid in nonagricultural pursuits and to have the ad vantages of the city has practically reached its limit. Whereas two or three generations ago two thirds of the total population were on the farm, to-day the figures are reversed, and two thirds are off the farm. The present high prices for agricultural products would indicate that the proportion left on the farm cannot run much lower. While there are yet some new lands to be subdued, while machinery will be still further perfected so as to reduce hand labor, while methods of farm management will be greatly improved, and while economic plants and domestic animals will be improved by breeding so as to yield a larger and more economic product, yet, on the other

1 Assisted by William F. Harding.

hand, advancement in nonagricul tural vocations will also there greatly increase the production per worker, providing these classes with more to give in exchange for food and other products of the farm. People will flock to that calling which offers the largest remuneration, but it is not likely that less than one fourth of the whole people will be permanently required to bring forth the raw products of food and clothing from the soil. The proportions on and off the farm have nearly reached the point where they will remain static.

Agricultural Organization. — Wonderful progress is being made in developing agricultural institutions for research and education, and associations designed to foster particular country-life interests. Suggestions for an all-round organization of agricultural affairs have arisen during the last few years. While the great body of work in advancement will be done in definite institutions, yet there is a rising call for team work among all agencies striving to better country life. Such organization is needed to look after some of the wider interests of the open country. On the other hand, local organizations are being multiplied and strengthened.

During the last few years a large number of coöperative enterprises have been established. These include increased numbers of coöperative creameries, cheese factories, coöperations for marketing grains, fruit, and produce, for providing insurance, for breeding animals, and also coöperation of the national and state agricultural institutions with the farmers. An organization has been suggested to develop the laws relating to coöperations as distinguished from the law of corporations. Suggestions have been made that the public audit

ing now given to banks and to insurance companies should be given also to coöperative creameries, cooperative stores, coöperative fruitselling organizations, and to similar forms of coöperation, thus to encour age these institutions.

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Agricultural Research. Probably $50,000,000 has been spent in this country for research in agriculture. Federal and state legislative bodies are increasing the grants for this purpose. Approximately $10,000,000 annually of public money is now spent for research in agriculture and home economics. The United States Department of Agriculture is recognized as the greatest research institution in the world. The state experiment stations are gaining strong grasp on the local problems of their respective states, while the United States Department of Agriculture is in a vital way taking hold of the larger and interstate problems. Congress by act of May 26, 1910, appropriated $12,767,636 for the Department of Agriculture for the present fiscal year (ending June 30, 1911), compared with $12,275,036 for the preceding year. In addition there is a permanent appropriation of $3,000,000 for meat inspection and an allotment of $460,000 for the department's printing, besides $720,000 intrusted to the department for distribution to state experimental stations under the Hatch act. Stations wholly or partially maintained by Federal funds expended in all $3,053,446.90 in the fiscal year 1909, the United States contributing $1,248,000 of this. Additions to their equip ment were made to the value of $744,

561.93.

Education for Country Life. Our public educational system has finally begun to take up the education of all people who are to be engaged in agricultural production, or in technical lines related specifically to agriculture. The people generally are coming to see that agricultural education is a large project requiring financing and organization. The vocational education of 6,000,000 farm managers and 6,000,000 managers of farm homes is looming up as an undertaking calling for national and state cooperation. During the year

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vocational education has been widely discussed in educational circles, but especially by business economists, and legislators. To take selected portions of the vast body of knowledge derived from agricultural research to all our farmers and farm youth is seen to be both a necessary and an expensive matter. The necessity has been emphasized by James J. Hill and others, who have shown that in two or three generations we shall need to feed double the present population. We can add fifty per cent to our cultivated acreage, and to double the product on this larger area we must add about fifty per cent to the yield per acre. There is thus involved in better plans for farming, in better execution of these plans, in better machinery, and in better plants and animals, the production of several additional billions of farm products.

The year has shown a tendency to reduce the quantity of our agricul tural exports. Our balance of trade is very useful to us in keeping our financial status in a stable form. We could afford even much larger expenses for public agricultural work than now, if for no other purpose than to sustain our balance in foreign trade.

The Graduate Agricultural School. -At the apex of the system of education for American country life we have the graduate agricultural school. This school, dealing with methods of education and with research, is open only to graduates of agricultural colleges. Most of its students are assistants and leaders in agricultural college and experiment station work. It is supported by the Association of Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations, assisted by the United States Department of Agriculture. Its 1910 session had 205 students.

Agricultural Colleges and High Schools. The sixty-five agricultural colleges enrolled, for the year 1909, 1,107 graduate students including those in engineering courses, 6,822 undergraduates in agricultural courses, 7,059 in special and short courses in agriculture, and 197 in teachers' courses in agriculture. There are fifty-eight agricultural high schools

receiving state aid, two entirely on private foundations, and twenty-eight general high schools receiving state aid for teaching agriculture. Besides pupils in high schools, there are a large number in agricultural classes in secondary courses of common schools. Agricultural education is rapidly growing in number of students and in popular favor.

Consolidated Rural Schools.-There are now something over 1,000 typical consolidated rural schools; that is, schools to which the pupils are hauled from a distance as great as it is practicable to haul the children, each school district covering an area approximately five miles square. Approximately 200 consolidated rural schools were organized in 1910. There are also probably 3,000 partially consolidated rural schools in which less than half a dozen schools covering less than twenty-five square miles are consolidated into a single school. Since three fourths of the work of Vocational education in agriculture must be done in local schools, it would seem that the consolidation of the one-district, one-room schools into five-room institutions, large enough to employ a teacher of agriculture and a teacher of home economics as principal and assistant principal, is the most urgently needed new development in country-life education. The rapid increase of rural-school consolidation for the year has caused those who have most information in the matter to estimate that eventually two thirds of the approximately 300,000 one-room rural schools of America will be consolidated.

College and Department Extension Work. Next to the consolidated rural school, the most important new developments in country-life education are extension organizations in the United States Department of Agriculture, in state departments of agriculture, and in the state college of each state. Considerably more than $1,000,000 is expended by these organizations. A large part of this money is used under the auspices of the United States Department of Agriculture, coöperating with the colleges of agriculture in many states and with private organizations. Under one form of this work, called

demonstration farming, general agents, state agents, district agents, and county agents are organized into a force of teachers and inspectors to induce thousands of farmers to plant limited areas of their farms to crops under plans supplied by the officers of the government or state. During the year farmers' institute meetings are held on these experiment fields.

The better plowing, the more intelligent use of fertilizers, the better seeds, and the superior cultivation prescribed by the farm demonstration agents result in the demonstration farmer showing himself and his neighbors how to materially increase production per acre and per worker. Often this increase is fifty, one hundred, and even two hundred per cent. This work is mainly centered in the South as yet, and, though only a few years have elapsed since its inauguration, it is having an enormous influence on the gross production of these states.

A report of the farm demonstration work of Dr. Knapp, for example, in teaching the southern farmers how not only to grow more cotton, but also to grow more diversified crops, reads like a romance. The fact that the average farm is producing hardly two thirds as much as it ought, and that many farms are producing less than one half what they ought, has given departments and schools of agriculture a most wonderful opportunity to be of material benefit to the country. The states and colleges of agriculture are rapidly increasing their expenditures for farmers' institutes, itinerant schools, correspondence courses, short courses, and other established forms of extension instruction for adult farmers and farmers' wives. It is estimated that the (approximately) $20.000.000 spent on agricultural education and research in the United States are increasing production at least $400.000,000, one dollar producing an additional return of twenty dollars.

The Rising Body of Knowledge.— Rough estimates place the amount of money already expended in agricultural research in America at $50,000,000. The states, as well as the general government, are yearly increas ing the expenditure for this work.

Since expenditures along this line are | being rather rapidly increased, it is safe to say that within a generation or so the total sum thus expended will have been increased to half a billion. It is admitted that the knowledge already accumulated, a small part of which has been put in pedagogical form and is being introduced into our school system, is having a profound effect on agriculture and on country life. The farmers have changed from their attitude of sneering at science in farming, and are very rapidly coming to a high appreciation of the value of technical knowledge in farm production, farm home making, and rural affairs generally. Great advances have been made in methods of research in the last quarter of a century, and a body of men trained in research is being rapidly developed. The enlargement of agricultural colleges, the multiplication of agricultural high schools, and of consolidated rural schools large enough to have departments of agricultural instruction, is resulting in the education of a body of men and women trained to teach agriculture and home making.

Development of Pedagogical Methods. Educators are blocking out courses of study in agriculture and home economics for schools of all grades. Text-books are being provided in the subjects of farm management, horticulture, live-stock production, dairying, and home making. Besides the text to be studied, these books contain directions for demonstrations to be given by the teacher and practice work to be carried out by the students. The pupils in the consolidated rural school, for instance, are to have some laboratory practice in the laboratory room. Here a ten-acre school farm will provide outdoor work also in field crops, horticulture, landscape gardening, and forestry. The technological agricultural high school has a large farm with barns, laboratories, and practice shops. The agricultural college is even more elaborately fitted out with laboratories and with splendid opportunities for library research. Many of these colleges have well-developed graduate courses, and many of those students who care to be tech

nicians can graduate into the agricultural experiment stations and departments of agriculture. Here under the direction of seasoned scientists they serve apprenticeships, and eventually many of them gain positions where they can carry forward researches. Those who are most successful often gain the leadership of groups of men engaged in a given line of research. There is no other line of education in this country which leads such a large number forward from a public-school system into a public technical service toward which the education is directed.

It is found also that with a relatively small amount of public money the backward farm manager can receive instruction which will result in his greatly improving the quality and quantity of his products. The marked effect of demonstration farming in the South, supported in part by public and in part by private funds, is the most encouraging line of extension work.

Development of Agricultural Books. -The year 1910, in common with the years of the past decade, has seen substantial development in agricultural literature. Books which were impossible on some subjects a decade ago are now being produced. For example, not many years ago no one had wrought out a successful outline of the subject of farm management; plant breeding was then but very crudely presented in bulletins, where now text-books are being prepared. The accumulations of knowledge in such subjects as entomology and the diseases of plants are so extensive that only the more general facts can be assembled in a manual or in a text-book.

Growth of Agricultural Periodicals. Never before did our agricultural periodicals have such growth. Our 468 agricultural papers have an ag gregate subscription list probably quite equal to the whole number of farmers in the United States, numbering between 6,000,000 and 7,000,000. A very great improvement is observed in the quality and value of the technical and general information carried to the farmers by these publications. While the experiment stations and departments of agriculture

these periodicals secure their data, yet the farmers themselves are supplying a much more definite line of information in articles and correspondence than they did to these publications a decade or two ago. Every farmer's interest, every class of live stock, every class of plants, and every manufacture using agricultural products has its class periodicals. The aggregate sum of money received for advertising by these papers amounts to many millions annually, and the advertising pages of these periodicals no less than the editorial pages carry most valuable information to all of the farmers of the land. With the development of agricultural schools and colleges, the editorial chairs of these papers are being filled with men trained in agricultural technic and in agricultural economics. The women of the farm also are taking a prominent part in these papers, and the pages devoted to the farm home, to farm youth, and to rural sociology, have an aggregate influence which is very large.

FARM MANAGEMENT

The fact that we have practically no more new lands, and that our urban population is increasing rapidly while the increase of our farm production is relatively somewhat reduced, has resulted in high-priced foods. The proportion of population has become unbalanced, with not enough people growing food to keep the price low. Our nonagricultural population will increase in numbers and in purchasing power per capita. They will be ready and able to buy farm products at relatively high prices. Those who own lands see and realize these facts; consequently the price of land in the United States has very greatly increased within the last decade. Farm lands have increased between 1900 and 1910 probably fifty to seventy-five per cent in price. Farm labor has also become much higher in price, as have also other things which enter into the cost of producing the raw materials of food and clothing.

Since it seems likely that farm ends will continue to increase in

in the cost of producing foods promises to remain permanently higher than formerly. Since nonagricultural industries are growing rapidly and are anxious for labor even at high prices, it seems certain that agricultural labor will continue to command good wages, thus making higher labor charges in the production of farm products. The products which the farm purchases are increasing greatly in quantity, as our farmers are con stantly demanding better living and better equipment on their farms. On the other hand, better scientific methods of farming, improved machinery, and plants and animals with heredity made better by breeding, are tending to keep the cost of farm products from rising. On the whole, the general industrial and financial situation warrants the hope that agricultural production has reached a permanent basis of better remuneration than during the last third of the nineteenth century.

Climate. Taken in its entirety as related to the total production of the United States and of the world, the factor of climate is rather constant in the making of farm products. However, when applied to any one crop grown on a large and widely distributed area, as wheat or corn or cotton, climate as a factor varies materially from year to year. Thus, we have fluctuation of approximately twenty per cent in the yield of these great crops; and in case of crops grown on a more limited area, as flax, grown mainly in Minnesota and the Dakotas, or hemp, grown mainly in a few counties in Kentucky, climate as a factor in the annual product produces an even greater variation than that named.

The rate of advancement of prices of farm products has been recently accentuated by a period of marked drouth in the semiarid regions in the West. The shortage of crops in that region this season is sharply bring ing home the fact that we cannot hope for a rapid increase of production beyond our present “dry-land frontier. Increase in production must henceforth come largely from increasing the acreage annually under cultivation in regions already settled and