6 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



THE CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH 



Has some bearing on the farm question and affects the farmers, 

 not only in depriving them of the young men who are drawn into 

 these great industrial marts to supply the immense market for 

 clerks, etc., but by bringing about a concentration of land owner- 

 ship and increased tenant farming. It is clear, from observation 

 and the study of political economy, that the number of poor and 

 destitute people are increasing in this country and that the number 

 of private fortunes are growing larger. The conditions that affected 

 many countries of Europe, especially England, have been trans- 

 planted to this country and for a quarter of a century this concen- 

 tration of wealth has gone on until we have outstripped every nation 

 on the globe. Statisticians have declared, that as far back as 1890, 

 one per cent, of the people owned over one-half the nation's wealth. 

 In 1900 it was estimated that 440 corporations owned 120,000,000,000 

 of the $90,000,000,000 that represented the wealth of this country. 

 And such is this money-mad trend and mania for merging gigantic 

 interests, that todaj^ a less number of corporations possess a greater 

 amount of the money of this land than fifteen years ago. And should 

 this continue, according to one of the greatest corporation lawyers 

 and political economists of this country, in 1950 -fifty thousand per- 

 sons will siibstantially own the Ufiited States. 



This alarming tendency of the times, more or less, affects the farm- 

 ing industry of the United States by the concentration of land owner- 

 ship and the increase of farm tenantry. In some of the states one- 

 half or more of the farms are operated by tenants. Laws that will 

 correct some of the abuses of the tenant system on one hand and in- 

 crease the efficiency of same system on the other hand will, to a great 

 extent, give an uplift to agriculture. 



FACING THE SUNRISE 



In the face of all the difficulties confronting agricultural devel- 

 opment in Pennsylvania, a few of which have been briefly enumer- 

 ated, as a State, a better day is dawning. On every hand there are 

 evidences of this uplift. The large number of our young men at- 

 tending agricultural schools, fitting themselves for agricultural 

 activity, is a gratifying evidence of this trend toward better things. 

 The wonderful increase in the demand for agricultural literature 

 and the increasing number of farm journals published indicates the 

 drift of the thought of the people. The increasing demand for more 

 farmers' institutes and for the advice and helpful suggestions of the 

 farm advisers anrl the large attendance at farmers' meetings demon- 

 strates the fact that there lias come to the farmers of the State a 

 great awakening in all lines of agriculture. In short, agriculture 

 today is more talked about, written about and thought of than ever 

 in tlio liistory of the past, which augers well for a greater future in 

 this tlie oldest industry on the globe. We are facing the sunrise of 

 a brighter day in the people's industry — the great life-preserving 

 occupation of the world without which all other industries would fail. 



Pennsylvania is essentially an industrial state. Three-sevenths 

 of all the iron and steel in the nation is manufactured in the old 

 Keystone State, while from fifty-two to fifty-four per cent, of all the 

 coal in the United States is mined from our almost inexhaustible 



