42 TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY REporRT. 
for new and careful study. Nor is this subject peculiar to agri- 
culture; it is rather a great question of public policy that funda- 
mentally concerns the organization of society, and it cannot in any 
way be separated from the discussion of the great public questions 
of the day. 
Mere public propaganda cannot solve these questions of land 
occupancy. Associations and conventions cannot solve them. Im- 
portation of labor cannot solve them, much as it may help the 
individual farmer here and there. It is a debatable question whether 
we should try to restock many of the present farms merely by 
putting a foreign family on them. Perhaps the very reason why 
these farms are in the process of decline is that they are necessarily 
ineffective economic units and are not capable of being directed 
into a farm management that is adaptable to present conditions. 
Merely to put families back on many of these farms would be to 
continue the old order; and it is this old order that we need to 
modify or to outgrow. | 
Viewed as an economic question, the shifting of farm occupation 
should not disturb us more than other shifting of population. In 
the present day, some of the lands that are now “ abandoned” 
would not have been settled. They would remain in timber; and 
now, by the inexorable power of economic forces, they are returning 
into forest. The first flush of the settlement of the West has 
passed. Manufacturing industries have attained stable conditions. 
Persons are looking again to the country. The better farms again 
are being farmed. Farmers are buying up adjacent lands and ex- 
tending their business. Near the railroads, city people are building 
cottages and retreats on the sites of old farms, to find respite and 
peace. Other lands hang in the balance between the old and the 
new. Change of ownership is perhaps the first step in the solution 
of the problem. The difficulty is that farm management may not 
change with the ownership, but a new set of ideas is likely to 
follow sooner or later. 
No mere treatment of symptoms can have much permanent effect 
on agricultural conditions. The agitation about these so-called 
“abandoned farms” is largely misdirected. It is well enough to ~ 
make great effort to sell the abandoned farms, but it is better to 
combine this effort with a movement to reorganize farming. No 
hasty or clamorous propaganda is likely to be of much service; no 
introduction of mere extraneous agencies or forces can count much 
