Cooperative Work with Columbia University 487 



Middle West. Only a day or two ago I saw a statement, issued by 

 the United States Department of Agricultnre, that land vahies 

 throughout all this region had increased on an average of $10 

 per acre in the last four or five years. 



So rapid has been the rise in the value of lands in the Middle 

 West that people can no longer afford to use them for the pro- 

 duction of food. These rapid advances in land values are doubt- 

 less likely to be more or less temporary. We camiot see how they 

 are to be permanent without very profound changes in our whole 

 plan of agricultural work and its development. As it is now, the 

 high cost of land is forcing a system of agricultural tenantry, 

 which, without safeguards, is most dangerous to our whole agri- 

 cultural work and to our ideals of rural life. The question very 

 naturally arises as to whether all these matters that we are refer- 

 ring to in their economic bearing, have not a tendency, or will 

 not have a tendency in the near future, to bring about conditions 

 such as exist in many parts of the Old World ; namely, a sort of 

 agricultural peasantry — a class of people who must be content 

 to work the land simply because they cannot get into any other 

 vocation, or because they have permitted themselves to become 

 subjected to the results of economic laws over which, as citizens 

 of this great republic, they should have had some control. Any 

 thought of an agricultural peasantry is abhorrent to American 

 ideals. The rapid growth of absentee landlordism, noted in many 

 of our western sections, tends in the direction of the matter that 

 we are discussing. Absentee landlordism makes no plan or well- 

 defined effort to maintain the fertility of the soil. 



Encouragement of a systeni of land-robbing and soil-mining 

 indicates conditions that must be seriously considered in connec- 

 tion with any development of our future agriculture and the solu- 

 tion of any questions in the matter of an outlook toward agricul- 

 ture not only in the East but elsewhere, for agriculture and 

 farming are no longer localized. Agriculture is nationalized, and 

 any conditions affecting the industry in one part of the country 

 will affect it in other parts of the country. 



It is not surprising, therefore, with conditions as we have de- 

 scribed them in the Middle West, that people in that and other 

 sections are more and more turning their attention to opportuni- 



