72 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



New England, and they are economic failures. The plan is a failure 

 as applied to New England conditions, and yet these farms are located 

 in the midst of the best markets and are in a good country. Intensive 

 farming, which means the application of more labor, more fertilizer, 

 more care, to the unit of production (the bushel of corn, the pound of 

 beef or of butter), can only be applied when the value of the product 

 is sufficiently large to make it economically possible. Whether that 

 time has now come is an economic question which we will soon work 

 out, but it does not follow that, under all conditions, intensive farming 

 will make prosperous farmers and profitable farming. Neither does it 

 follow that a small farm intensively cultivated \nll decrease the cost of 

 production. 



Now, I am afraid that some of the things I have said may lead 

 some of you to think that I am advocating careless farming. Some 

 people have made the mistake of assuming that large farms and care- 

 less farming are necessarily the same thing. We must certainly im- 

 prove our methods of production, we must certainly in the American 

 nation, increase the amount of production per acre; but in order to 

 do that, it is not necessaiy to reduce the size of our farms. Within 

 certain limits, it is not necessary for us to have a different standard 

 of economic organization for agriculture than we have for making 

 shoes. 



Another criticism that may be offered is that land is so high now 

 that a man must be satisfied with a small farm. 'My answer to that 

 is, that there never was a time when it was so easy to secure large farms 

 as it is now. We have in the past assumed that ownership of land was 

 necessary for prosperous agriculture. We are now at the point where 

 successful agriculture will be conducted on rented farms, and I speak 

 from expei-ience when I say, that it is cheaper to rent land than it is 

 to own it in Missouri, and in most portions of the Middle West. It is 

 cheaper to rent land than to own it; and most of you gentlemen, I am 

 sure, will bear me out in that statement when you stop to estimate the 

 cost of maintaining the imlprovements on a farm, the decline in soil 

 fertility which is a debt upon the owner, and the other factors involved. 

 I am not pleading for careless farming, but I am definitely and posi- 

 tively opposed to the idea of reducing every farmer to a "maintenance 

 ration." 



AVe shall always have a large number of small farms. The "one- 

 man" farm is an economic unit. It is not the best economic unit, — it 

 can never be; but we will always have "one-man" farms, that is to 

 say an amount of land which can be handled by one man and his 

 family. But that man will always be at a great economic disadvantage. 



