10 AGRICULTURE, MANUFACTURING, COMMERCE 



but with a farm value of six million dollars more. In 1912 they 

 increased the oats production by the unprecedented amount of 

 five hundred million bushels, but the crop value only increased 

 thirty-eight million dollars. Hence the problem of producing 

 more is not the only problem of the farmer. It is no longer his 

 greatest problem. He must produce more of the right thing. As Sir 

 Horace says, the problem of better business must be solved if agricul- 

 ture is longer to compare favorably with the other great industries. 



Industrial Concentration. The most striking economic differ- 

 ence between agriculture and the other great industries up to the 

 present time is exhibited in the extent of organization and con- 

 centration in the general industries, on the one hand, as against the 

 I lack of organization and centralization in agriculture, on the other 

 hand. Some evidence on this point will make the situation clear. 



Lumber. The Report of the Bureau of Corporations on the 

 lumber industry (January 20, 1913), in speaking of our standing 

 timber, says that these three facts are shown by the investigation: 

 (1) the concentration of a dominating control of our standing tim- 

 ber in a comparatively few enormous holdings steadily tending 

 toward a central control of the lumber industry; (2) vast specula- 

 tive purchase and holding of timberland far in advance of any use 

 thereof; (3) an enormous increase in the value of this diminishing 

 natural resource, with great profits to its owners. This value, by 

 the very nature of standing timber, the holder neither created 

 nor substantially enhances. Forty years ago, continues the report, 

 at least three-fourths of the timber now standing was (it is esti- 

 mated) publicly owned. It passed from Government to private 

 ownership. The three largest holders are now the Southern Pacific 

 Company, the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, and the Northern 

 Pacific Railway Company. "The Southern Pacific Company 

 holdings," continued the report, "is the greatest in the United 

 States one hundred and six billion feet. It is difficult to give 

 an adequate idea of its immensity. It stretches practically six 

 hundred and eighty miles along that railroad between Portland and 

 Sacramento. The fastest train over this distance takes thirty-one 

 hours. During all that time the traveler thereon is passing through 

 lands a large proportion of which for thirty miles on each side 

 belongs to the railroad, and in almost the entire strip this corpora- 

 tion is the dominating owner of both timber and land." 



"These three holdings have enough standing timber to build 

 an ordinary five- or six-room frame house for each of the sixteen 

 million families in the United States in 1900." The holdings of 



