480 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



settlers for their unoccupied lands were holding up alluring pictures 

 of fertile acres at ridiculously low figures. 



Then came the boom in Iowa land and upon the wings of the boom 

 the ubiquitous land agent with his persuasive tongue and enticing de- 

 lineations. The Iowa farmer listened. Also he did some figuring. At 

 the prevailing high prices it was possible to sell his small tract at such 

 an attractive figure that the proceeds would purchase three, four, five 

 times as many acres in some of the further-west states or in Canada, 

 and afford "room for me an' the boys to spread out." 



The reader knows what happened. Often the sale was made to some 

 rich neighbor whose being was dominated by an ambition to own all 

 the land in his immediate vicinity and who possessed the means, cash 

 or credit, to gratify the ambition. The small farmer packed up his 

 growing family and hied him away to new fields of conquest. The pur- 

 chaser, with plenty of horse power, added another machine or two and 

 hired and extra hand to work the farm which formerly had made a 

 home for half a dozen persons. When the census enumerator appeared 

 upon the scene to count nosei in 1910 the sum total suffered to the ex- 

 tent of the difference between the hired man upon the ground and 

 the departed family. There, gentle reader, is that little old 7,000 slump. 

 And if it had not been for the fact that the word immigration did con- 

 tinue to obtain in Iowa, our defamers to the contrary notwithstanding, 

 the slump would have shown up as one of gigantic proportions, for 

 during that ten-year period Iowa sent vastly more than 7,000 souls out 

 and into the Country of the Setting Sun on missionary labors bent. 



Another thing. The envious ones insist that, out here in Iowa the 

 tendency is strongly toward landlordism; that the number of farms in 

 the state is growing smaller and the size of them, correspondingly larger. 

 They say that the big farmers are gobbling up the little fellows, steadily 

 but surely, and that in time Iowa will be a place of great estates, 

 worked by tenantry, something after the fashion in the "old country," 

 while the bloated owners will have nothing to do but clip coupons and 

 run for office. 



That the tendency of the ten-year period from 1900 to 1910, in spite 

 of more or less immigration, was toward larger farms cannot be denied. 

 Iowa has within her boundary lines a total of 35,575,040 acres of land. 

 Of this amount 32,951,056 acres are listed as farm land, representing 

 199,755 farms, the figures of 1915. In 1905 the enumerators found 209,163 

 farms, with a combined acreage of 33,228,448 acres. Now that certainly 

 looks bad for us; looks like we re9,lly might be treading the high road 

 to landlordism at a lively clip. But wait. 



When the enumerators counted the farms in 1905 they took three 

 acres as the minimum, henc6 the count that year included all farms of 

 three acres and more. Last year the minimum was raised to ten acres 

 and the count made on that basis, instead of three acres as formerly. 

 To the unbiased mind this fact is sufficient to account for the difference 

 between the figures of 1905 and 1915. Men familiar with conditions 

 throughout the state agree that the change in the minimum figure ac- 



