30 TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY REPport. 
the roadsides have a shabby appearance. Fields are often grown 
to weeds; yet these fields may be only resting until the owner finds 
time to put them into crop, or they may be used for light pasture, 
or they may be in the process of returning to forest. Of course, 
they are relatively ineffective pieces of property, but the conclusion 
must not be reached, because they are unkempt, and not in use at 
the time, that they are abandoned or that the owner considers that 
he is obliged to desert them. 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GENERAL SITUATION. 
It is unquestionably true that there is lessening utility of some 
of our farming lands. In the face of this fact, however, three 
other facts stand out prominently: (1) Markets are as good as ever, 
for there is no decline in the purchasing power of the people 
(rather there is a reverse tendency); (2) the land is still pro- 
ductive, notwithstanding a popular impression to the contrary; (3) 
good farmers are better off to-day than they ever were before. 
We have heard much about the abandonment of farms and we 
are likely to think that it measures a lessening efficiency of agri- 
culture. We must not be misled, however, by surface indications. 
We are now in the midst of a process of the survival of the fit. Two 
opposite movements are very apparent in the agriculture of the time: 
certain farmers are increasing in prosperity, and certain other farm- 
ers are decreasing in prosperity. The former class is gradually oc- 
cupying the land and extending its power and influence. The other 
class is leaving the land. Abandoned farms are not necessarily to be 
deplored; rather they are to be looked on as an expression of a 
social and economic change. 
The older farming was practically a completely self-regulating 
business, comprising not only the raising of food and of material 
for clothing, but also the preparation and manufacture of these 
products. The farmer depended on himself, having little necessity 
for neighbors or for association with other crafts. In the breaking 
up of the old stratification under the development of manufacture 
and transportation and the consequent recrystallizing of society, the 
old line fence still remained; persons clung to the farm as if it were 
a divinely ordained and indivisible unit. 
We are now approaching a time when the traditional boundaries 
must* often be disregarded. The old farms are largely social or 
traditional rather than economic units. Because a certain eighty 
acres is enclosed with one kind of fence and assessed to one man 
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