No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 243 



creased. The question on which they were experimenting was to find 

 just what was the best time in the growth of the plant to transplant it. 

 "Well," I said, ''what of it? After you have made the discovery will 

 it be of any practical importance?" The reply was, the smaller land 

 OAvners could make use of it." 



After looking over the beautiful, level, fertile areas, without a fence 

 or a house for miles, every inch of which, except for the roadways, is 

 under cultivation, I could not help wondering what an Iowa or a 

 South Dakota farmer could do on that land if he would go in there 

 with modern American machinery. There is no more difficulty in 

 cultivating the land in 80-acre or 800-acre tracts than there is in 

 South Dakota, except the separate ownership. Ownership is an arti- 

 ficial condition. It seemed to me that the natural conditions must 

 prevail ; the artificial conditions must give way. Later, however, I 

 visited a farm of 300 acres conducted very much as an American farm 

 is conducted. Herfe I found Polish women being used to pull the sugar 

 beets. There is a law in Oermany, as in this country, against contract 

 labor ; but they found it necessary, in order that crops on these large 

 farms may be harvested, to allow the bringing in of Polish laborers 

 during the harvest season. These people can only live in Germany 

 six months, and then must be returned to Poland. I asked why they 

 used women instead of men, and they said because it was cheaper. Jn 

 other words, the Germans find it impossible to employ native labor 

 cheaply enough to produce sugar in competition with other countries, 

 or with the small land owners. After seeing this farm, I concluded 

 that 1 would not try to reform the German Land System. 



Another thing which v.'ill impress the traveler in Europe, and the 

 longer he staj's and the more he gets in to the by-wa^s, the more he 

 will be astonished and impressed. I refer to the good roads. Every- 

 where in Europe the high-ways are veritable boulevards, and the by- 

 waj's are similar to the road as shown in Fig. 4. In Europe they do 

 not know what a thank-3'ou-ma'am. If you investigate the matter you 

 will also be surprised at the comparatively recent character of many 

 of these road-ways. France, for example, has been inhabited more or 

 less exclusively for eighteen or nineteen centuries. At the beginning 

 of the nineteenth century France had 30,000 miles of road-way; the 

 close of the centurj- she had 300,000 miles of road-way, which woul<] 

 probably average as good as the one shown in this picture. Duviug 

 the same period of time, the raw agricultural products have increased 

 in value from three billion francs to nine billion francs. No one, ol 

 course, would for a moment claim that the increased value of agri- 

 cultural products in France was mereh' the result of good roads, but 

 it is incontestable that the good roads of France are a factor in her 

 increased well-being. 



The next thing that will impress the hurried traveler is the general 

 lack of im]>roved farm machinery. I passed through Germany during 

 the fall haying season. Everywhere men and women were working 

 in the hay fields, (See Fig. 5) and in all Europe I saw just three mow- 

 ing machines at work. I saw two horse hay-rakes, but only one of 

 them Avas in use. Everywhere you see men mowing grass with a 

 scythe, and women raking with a hand rake. 



Necessarily a correlative to the lack of modern farm machinery is 

 a large amount of hand labor. Women work in the fields quite as fre- 

 quently as the men. I was shown into a barn in Southern Germany 



