38 TWENTy-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY Report. 
This rapidly moving readjustment and diversification will produce 
fundamental changes in the mode of farming and in the economic, 
social and political outlook of the people. In the mode of farming, 
it will force new business organization; and when new acres can- 
not be had, the old acres will be doubled by using them to greater 
depths. In very many ways, the shift is now demanding a new 
kind of study of agricultural questions. This reorganization of 
agriculture is bound to come in every State; it is naturally coming 
first in the East, and, in the interest of the whole country, we should 
meet it hopefully. 
Nor would I have my hearer feel that this readjustment is all in 
the future. It is proceeding at the present time, and with greater 
momentum and effectiveness that many of us, I suspect, are aware. 
After many years of touch with the problem and with the men who 
are capable of judging it, | am impressed that the persons who are 
most alarmed are those confined largely to offices and who are given 
to the study of statistics. 
THE SITUATION OF INDIVIDUAL FARMS. 
A discussion of statistical generalities does not exhibit the status 
of the individual farmer nor give us specific reasons for the decline 
of profitableness in farming. Every farm is a problem by itself 
and what may have been responsible for the defeat of one farmer 
may not have been the cause of the embarrassment of his neighbor. 
Some of the decline no doubt lies directly with the man, quite inde- 
pendently of the land; it is psychological and perhaps even 
hereditary, and in its community aspects it is social; but these phases 
I am not now prepared to discuss. 
The larger number of the farms of apparently declining efficiency 
are in the hill regions. Many of them are on soils of the volusia 
series, particularly on the volusia silt loam. This soil is of low 
humus content, usually with a high and compact subsoil, and limited 
root area. Many of these farms are unsuccessful in part because 
of their climate. They are elevated. It is often impossible to 
grow with profit the common varieties of corn and even of other 
grain. Sometimes the difficulty lies in their remoteness and the 
cost of transportation, together with the poor schools and social 
disadvantages that are a part of such isolation. Usually these hill 
lands are expensive to work and they do not lend themselves well 
to open tillage. Very frequently they suffer for lack of under- 
drainage. If the elevation is too high to grow good wheat it may 
