CooPEEATivE Work avith Columbia University 489 



to their full mental development. There is also less chance that 

 they will develop their full physical vigor under these unnatural 

 conditions. Neither on the intellectual side nor on the physical 

 side does it seem that there, is any substitute for direct contact 

 with nature. Life in the open country gives great opportunities, 

 but, of course, we all recognize that there is much to be done 

 toward improvement before full advantage can be taken of the 

 opportunities which ^Nature has so liberally afforded. A writer 

 has recently said that the actual labor of farming may not have an 

 educational superiority over many other vocations, except for the 

 greater variety and more numerous contacts with nature. 



I have spoken briefly of the point that fortunes are not made on 

 farms; in fact, when we come to study the matter critically, we 

 find that the labor income is necessarily quite modest. It is true 

 that with our modem studies of farm management, farm surveys, 

 etc., we have been able to determine pretty accurately what these 

 incomes are. At the same time, we have not yet been able to for- 

 mulate, blue-print, or project all the things that go along with 

 farm life, so that a mere expression- of the labor income of the 

 .farm is not to be regarded as by any means representing those 

 intangible things that cannot be expressed in terms of dollars and 

 cents. 



We have already referred to the fact that throughout the East 

 our people have been handicapped in the matter of being obliged 

 to farm small areas. Some studies of a very intensive nature have 

 recently been made by the Federal Department of Agriculture, 

 and these bring out some interesting facts in connection with the 

 relation of the size of a farm to the labor income. Other things 

 being equal, the labor income increases, with the size of the farm. 

 By " labor income " we mean the surplus after allowing for labor of 

 the family or self on the farm, and after allowing a certain per- 

 centage for depreciation, and 5 per cent on the investment. In 

 the surveys made by the Federal Department of Agriculture, a 

 group of sixty-one farms, containing from 41 to 60 acres — an 

 average of 52 acres — had a labor income of $550. In the next 

 group of sixty farms averaging from 01 to 80 acres, the labor 

 income was $730. Twenty-five per cent of this group had a 

 labor income-of over $1,000. In the third group, having farms 

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