THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VI. 429 



The most potent factor in the decline of farm lands in the manufac- 

 turing regions of the east is the surprising and unexpected; namely, the 

 location of the farmer near the factory or the mine. When eastern farmers 

 were voting high tariffs to foster the manufacturing industries 

 in the hope of thus having a market at their doors, they 

 did not foresee the result which now seems inevitable; namely, 

 that they can drive farm population to the factory and fix a 

 price for labor with which it is impossible for the farmer to compete. 

 This, we believe, has done more to reduce the price of farm lands than 

 western competition. 



It seems to us a very plain proposition when stated clearly. The 

 laborer lives in the village or city; he is paid by the day of so many hours. 

 Whether he works eight or ten hours, the work is done, and he has the 

 stir, the life and society of the city for relaxation. Hence, the farmer 

 naturally prefers the factory, the railroad, the mine, to the farm, and the 

 farm boy, unless he has an inherited instinct for country life, is apt to 

 follow. He is more likely to enter into the higher branches and become a 

 clerK, a bookkeeper, a salesman, or traveling man, but in any 

 case he is taken from the farm. If he is an inventive genius, 

 as New England people are to a great extent, he invents 

 something that he can push for himself and thus be free from 

 the long hours and isolation of the farm. He would not mini fanning 

 in the west where he can use machinery an -I. so to speak, bora with a 

 big auger, but he does not like farming in the heavy soils and small lields 

 among stumps and stones. 



These causes have driven the more enterprising and ambitious boys 

 from the farm and the farmer vainly tries to hire labor of a lower class to 

 conduct his farm operations. It soon becomes unpopular in the neighbor- 

 hood to be a farmer, farmers lose pride in it and thus the social element 

 drives men away from the farm and of course depreciates the value of 

 farm lands. 



The third cause is the decline of available fertility of eastern lands, 

 the result of the going out of the live stock business, except for dairying. 

 This means inevitably a lack of humus in the soil because of the want of 

 the continuous application of manure, and when the humus is gone out 

 the available fertility is gone out, no matter how much of the real but 

 unavailable fertility may remain. We have the authority of Mr. Whitney, 

 Chief of the Division of Soils, United States Department of Agriculture, 

 for the statement that these abandoned lands in New England show on 

 chemical analysis as large an amount of real fertility as they ever have, 

 and we believe it. The soil is simply out of physical condition because of 

 the lack of manure, and this because it does not pay to feed cattle, and if 

 they would feed there is no market except in the largest cities, and to be 

 sent there profitably they must be sent by the car load. People in the 

 farming regions of the eastern states eat Chicago beef. There are no 

 butchers, but simply cutters; no cattle buyers because so few beef cattle 

 are grown that it is difficult to procure a car load. As mucn as ten years 

 ago we asked an old farmer in Pennsylvania why he did not sell certain 

 dry cows. He replied: "Who would buy them?" We said: "The buyers, 



