94 THE FOOD CRISIS AND AMERICANISM 



agriculture, and as we are paying, and have been 

 paying, ever increasing millions annually for the sup- 

 port of the Federal Department of Agriculture, 

 scores of the State Universities, Agricultural Schools 

 and Colleges, these institutions are, in a very large 

 degree, responsible. For in addition to scientific re- 

 search and information, it was their manifest duty to 

 keep both Congress and the public advised as to the 

 labor situation and marketing conditions affecting 

 agriculture, for the betterment of which they were 

 created and are maintained. 



Table No. 8, made from the 1914 Year Book, show- 

 ing the average yields per acre of leading cereals in 

 our own, and European countries, since 1900, is evi- 

 dence that this appalling tendency continues. As 

 hundreds of thousands of acres of old, worn-out lands 

 throughout the East, during these fourteen years, have 

 been abandoned, and in the West hundreds of thou- 

 sands of acres of virgin soil been brought into cultiva- 

 tion, and as European lands have been worked for a 

 thousand years, conditions are worse even than those 

 indicated by tables. 



TABLE No. 8 



AVERAGE YIELD PER ACRE OF UNITED STATES AND 

 EUROPEAN COUNTRIES 1890-1914 



Barley Wheat Oats Rye 



United States 24.9 14.8 29.5- 16.1 



Germany 37-1 3O-7 54.0 27.4 



Russia 15.0 10.0 18.0 12.0 



France 24.1 20.1 31.1 16.9 



Hungary 24.6 19.0 31.5 18.3 



United Kingdom 35.5 334 43-5 29.1 



