Address. . 5 



Until within a few years most of the food of the world had to be 

 grown near the place where it was to be eaten. The raw material is 

 bulky and to carry it any considerable distance was expensive and 

 usually impossible. Then each region had to make its bread of such 

 grain as it could grow ; wheat bread was only for the rich, except in 

 most favored regions, while the masses of the people knew more of 

 rye, barley or corn bread. Then again, in the production of the 

 great staples, much more human labor had to be expended in the 

 production of a given amount than now. All kinds of farm imple-*' 

 ments have been improved and new ones devised. As an illustration 

 of this I will cite the harvesting and preparing grain for market. 

 Two years ago, when preparing for the Census office a report on 

 cereal productions in the United States, I very carefully investigated 

 the relative amount of labor now expended in this, as compared with 

 that required in the early part of the century. From all the data at 

 my command, I estimated that then each four bushels of wheat had 

 an average of at least one day's human labor applied to it in the 

 harvesting and preparing for market, while now, as wheat raising is 

 conducted in California, the amount is fifty or sixty bushels per day's 

 work, and with the combined harvester and thresher it often rises 

 to one hundred and twenty-five and one hundred and fifty, or even 

 more bushels per day's work. 



But changes in the methods and facilities for transportation, 

 brought about by the use of steam, have been even more powerful 

 factors of disturbance. Before the era of steam, perhaps nineteen- 

 twentieths of the food of civilized people was eaten within thirty 

 miles of the place of its production. Now wheat is carried more 

 than half way around the world. Oregon, Minnesota, India and 

 Russia compete in the same markets, as if their fields were in the 

 same state. Bulky crops, as potatoes and cabbages, are carried 

 thousands of miles, and even such perishable products as fresh meat 

 and fruit are brought together from opposite hemispheres This has 

 changed the nature of the competition on nearly every farm in Christen- 

 dom, and has changed the food supply of all the great cities with 

 which we had much to do. 



Every farmer is familiar with the fact that this has changed New 

 England Agriculture, but I think that the vast majority of the peo- 

 ple have been misinformed as to the actual results. They see some 

 crops diminishing in their acreage, others driven out of cultivation 

 entirely, they see the population of the agricultural towns diminish- 

 ing, they see farmer's sons leaving the old farm and either drifting 



