THE FARM LAND 55 



1909 to 1,756,250 square miles in 1919. 47 Most of this new 

 land was in the West and Middle West. Of course when prices 

 are high, even poor land will support a family. But when prices 

 are low, good land plus a knowledge of sound farming practices 

 are necessary if the farmer is to make a profit. A large part of 

 this new land was poor. When prices sank, the farmer could 

 not grow enough to keep his family. So once again great areas 

 of land were abandoned. From 1917 to 1929 the acreage of 

 tilled land shrank by about 4,700 square miles, the first de- 

 crease in the history of the country, according to the ten-year 



census. 48 



When land is abandoned, two things may happen. The old 

 fields may grow up in brush and all that will be left to mark the 

 farm will be a few old stone walls and a lilac bush beside the 

 cellar hole of the house. This is usually the case in the East. In 

 the West, however, where there is less rain to nourish the 

 growth of grasses and brush, the tilled land often does not heal. 

 It becomes a sore. It spreads. The topsoil washes away. Per 

 haps wind blows the soil from the abandoned fields to an ad 

 joining grass field, killing the grass. Then that field, too, be 

 comes a bare flat to add its dust to the next field, and so on. In 

 both the East and the West, gullies cut into old abandoned 

 fields. These gullies, once they get started, are no respecters of 

 property lines. Forty years ago a drip from a farmer's barn in 

 Stewart County, Georgia, started a gully which today has con 

 sumed more than 40,000 acres. 49 Bad land spreads like an in 

 fectious rash over the countryside. 



TENANCY AND POOR LAND USE 



The fate of the people who tilled this land was not much 

 happier than that of the land itself. They too were eroded and 



47 National Resources Board Report, op. cit., p. 110. 



48 Loc. cit. 



49 Stuart Chase, Rich Land, Poor Land, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New 

 York, 1936, pp. 93-96. 



