A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 165 



and other changes in technique. Some of the land now operated will 

 be abandoned because of the effect of changes in physical condition, 

 such as erosion, and because of economic changes that will make the 

 land no longer profitable; that is, the same factors which were spoken 

 of as having brought about abandonment, and perhaps other factors, 

 are likely to be manifested in particular regions in the future as in 

 the past. 



Even during the decade 1920 to 1930 some new land was brought 

 into use in these originally forested regions east of the Great Plains. 

 In the counties that showed increases over 1920 there were 7,000,000 

 acres more of agricultural land. In those counties in which the agri- 

 cultural land was less in 1930 than in 1920 some new land was brought 

 into cultivation, but the amount was relatively insignificant. 



The only data that give any indication of the new land brought 

 into use in those counties are the data on land cleared and made 

 suitable for crops between 1920 and 1925, as reported by the Census 

 of Agriculture for 1925. The total cleared in the 5-year period in 

 the eastern forest regions was 3,500,000 acres. Little of this acreage 

 was in the New England or Middle Atlantic States. The larger part 

 was in the South, where many counties showed more agricultural land 

 in 1930 than in 1920. The important expansion in the agricultural 

 area during this period did not occur in the originally forested regions 

 east of the Great Plains but in the Great Plains. This expansion was 

 due in large part to the advances in .mechanization of agriculture 

 which made possible the production of wheat and cotton at a lower 

 cost than in the older production areas and helped to bring about 

 abandonment in these older areas. 



In addition to this expansion in the West the large exodus of persons 

 from farms to cities up to 1929, because of the relatively more pros- 

 perous condition of urban pursuits as compared with agricultural, was 

 important in bringing about abandonment in the originally forested 

 regions. The mechanization of agriculture is not now proceeding as 

 rapidly, at least during this depression, and the counter movement 

 of population from cities to the farms has exceeded the movement 

 from farms to cities in 1930, 1931, and 1932. 



Whether the present movements are only temporary is, of course, 

 difficult to foretell, since the outcome depends largely on the extent to 

 which industrial unemployment is eliminated in the processes of econo- 

 mic recovery. If this exodus from the city lowers labor costs in relation 

 to machinery costs to the point at which it is more profitable to pro- 

 duce a large quantity of agricultural products with more labor and 

 less machinery, then the expansion in the Great Plains and other 

 areas where agriculture is profitable under high mechanization will 

 not take place so rapidly as was true in the years just preceding 1929. 

 It is probable that there will be some increase in part-time and sub- 

 sistence farming by the movement of urban workers back to the land. 

 This movement will not appreciably affect the total land requirements 

 for agriculture since the amount of land used for agriculture per family 

 for part-time and subsistence farming is comparatively small. It will 

 tend to put some land in cultivation or prevent some land from being 

 abandoned near urban centers. The shifts that will occur in land 

 utilization will depend upon the changes that occur not only in agri- 

 culture but in industry, in transportation, and in all lines of economic 

 activity. 



