1208 ^^Ew YoKK State Agricultukal Society 



as to how ill the South, where more effort has hecii expended 

 perhaps up to now than in tlie West, even joniig boys who were 

 tauc;ht scientific methods of cultivation were able to increase the 

 product of an acre from 14 bushels of corn to GO bushels. We 

 must apply ourselves to these methods if we are to maintain our 

 great population and to maintain our national economic position. 

 Otherwise, the heightened cost of living will intensifv the struggle 

 for existence in all callings — those apart from the farm as well 

 as on the farm — and we shall go backward in the scale of civili- 

 zation and economic development. Inevitably for this new phase 

 of farming evolution there must be a larger application of capital 

 than in the past. Farming must be reduced to a business as 

 sure and as carefully calculated as the manufacturing and dis- 

 tribution of products, and in order to do that there must be capi- 

 tal applied not only to the productive |X)wer of the fami but to 

 the methods of distributing its products. 



In an interesting article by Professor Kemmerer, who is to ad- 

 dress you to-morrow, he pointed out that the average value per acre 

 of farm land in the United States increased from $)15,57 in lUOO 

 to $32.40 in 1910; that is, an increase of more than 100 per cent, 

 in average value in ten years. Mark you, not the value of 

 farms as a whole, which have increased in a slightly greater 

 amount, but the average value of farm land per acre, has doubled 

 in ten years. In farm implements and machinery the total in- 

 vestment — not the average per farm — increased from about 

 $r)00,000,000 in 1900 to $1,265,000,000 in 1910, or an increase 

 of 150 per cent. Xow I give these figures because they have a 

 direct bearing on this problem of improved methods of credit. 

 They put the farmer in the position of a capitalist. If already 

 he possesses this billion and a quarter of capital in the form of 

 niacliiiicry and implements, then he is in a better position to 

 boiTow than in those remote times when he had no such invcst- 

 nicnts or when thev were limited in amount. In other words, 

 his means of borrowing are increasing as the necessity for the 

 widening of the scope of his eH'orts is developing. lie must 

 follow otlier industries in sjxn'ding u]) tlie efHciency of his 

 in:!cliinery, in a])i)lying business methods and economics to his 

 methods of production. 



