392 KEPORT OF THE COMMISSIO.NER OF AGRICULTURE. 



]>rimitive agriculture return low yields. The progress of skill and learn- 

 ing is indicated by a country's average of yield. The statistical coin- 

 mission of the International Congress twelve years ago made the average 

 vieldof wheat 12.G bushels in Hungary, 13.2 in Portugal, 17.1 in France. 

 24r.S in Holland, and 29.9 in Great Britain. 



In this country, where maize is a universal crop, the richest districts 

 do not necessarily produce the largest yields per acre. Xew Euglatid, 

 vrith a soil of sand and gra-vel, averaged in the last five harvests TiO.S 

 bushels per acre, with good culture and the use of fertilizers. The iMis- 

 souri Vallej', fat with the elements of maize growth, yielded at the rate 

 of 29.8 bnshcls, and the Ohio Valley 20 busliels, while the Middle States, 

 Avith much aid from experimental science, came very near the best 

 Western results with 29.4 bushels. 



In seasons unfavorable to production, the money value of skill and 

 science in agriculture is immensely enhanced. It is often remarked 

 that farmers receive as much for a very small crop as for a very large 

 one. In 1881, 1,195,000,000 bushels of corn were worth $700,000,000; 

 in 1881, 1,795,000,000 bushels were valued at $0-11,000,000; a small crop 

 was worth 03.0 cents per bushel, a larger one 35.7 cents. A crop of 

 cotton once sold for 810,000,000 less than the previous one, which was 

 more than a million bales larger. Nevertheless, there is disaster in a 

 small crop. The failure is unequ.ally distributed. The few advanced 

 farmers grow nearly full crops, and receive larger revenues than usual ; 

 the many unskilled and careless suffer disastrous reduction of yield and 

 quality, and fail to make return for seed and labor. Given unscien- 

 tific agriculture, with an inauspicious season, and the x)Oor may grow 

 poorer, while the scientific farmer in the same year may grow richer. 



These contrnsls in present i)roduction and profit of agriculture are 

 sufficiently striking. But the present will soon be past. We are con- 

 fronted wirh a future full of possibilities as of dangers and difficulties. 

 Experiment, skill, science applied to industry can only avert the latter. 

 Fifteen years ago 47 i)er cent, of our people were employed in agricult- 

 ure; five years ago, 44 per cent. ; to-day perhaps 42. We find that all 

 nations in which more than half of the laborers are in agriculture are 

 comparatively poor, and their rural processes are primitive, their im- 

 plements rude, their rate of production low. ^Ye find that in the highest 

 development of agriculture, 20 ]ier cent., or 25 at most, can furnish food 

 for all. In this country, allowing for surplus production, 40 per cent, 

 can readily meet the demand of home consumption, and 33 per cent, 

 will probably do it in the not far distant future, leaving two-thirds to 

 produce other forms of wealth. With increase of permanent wealth 

 there will come demands for luxuries of living which will add to the 

 profit of the farmer. As the facilities for production increase, one 

 danger from an unscientific, primitive, routine agriculture is great excess 

 in certain crops that have been cultivated from the earliest days with 

 little labor. Already our wheat has encountered the lowest markets of 

 a century in Great Britain. The present price of wheat in Liverpool 

 is today lower than in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. 



What is needed, then? Evidently experiment in collecting new plants, 

 in producing new varieties by scientific process, in cheai)euing the cost 

 of cultivation to compete with foreign production by cheap labor. It 

 will not do to say that, having learned how to compete with the world 

 in certain products that are very cheap, we can never learn to com- 

 pete in the matter of products that are dear. In our desire for speed, 

 for large results by labor-saving machinery, we must not fall into rou- 

 tine, and decline investigation, inventive research, and experimental 



