SOME IMPENDING CHANGES. 19 



the piihlio (U)riiaiii — is like to become Ibe cretiitor sectiou at a very early day. Moreover 

 the products of manulacture cousuiued by the western people will, with no more farui8 

 to open by the increasing population, be from year to year more and more the out-turn of 

 western establishments. 



The farmer, while eng:ged in opening and equipping his farm, with prices often on 

 a parity with or below the cost of production, has been forced to become a borrower, and 

 after paying interest and taxes, has had barely the necesaities of life. Now, however, 

 with the relative niimlier of his competitors yearly le.ssening, both at home and abroad, 

 belter prices obtaining, with an assurance — arising from an increase in the population 

 out of proportion to any possible iucre.Tse in the area under cultivation— that well within 

 ten years sucli prices will double, there is every reason to believe that lie will cease to be 

 a debtor. 



Without the possibility of the further material expansion of the cultivated area, 

 will come a restriction of new enterprises, fewer chances to make great fortunes, and a 

 steadier and more settled social life for the comfortable classes; and although for a time 

 the young man may not find the difficulties attending a start in life seriously increased, 

 yet with the next generation the way will, as a rule, be open only to him who has wealth 

 or social influence at his command. In other words, we shall jilace the same value upon 

 such influences, and find the opportunities for a career to depend on much the same con- 

 ditions as now obtain in Western Europe. 



For the artisan and laborer the impending change points, in the near-by years, to a 

 brisker demand for bis services, as the farmer becomes a more liberal buyer and builder. 



To the farmer the exhaustion of the arable lands will bring changes most desirable. 

 Not competing with the whole world for glutted foreign markets, the demand for his 

 products will be steadier, and being quite sufficient to absorb all his commodities and 

 divest the option dealer of much of his pernicious power over prices, which will for years 

 advance steadily, as demand will soon and progressively outrun production, thus enabling 

 him to discharge bis debts; to build better houses, barns and granaries; provide more and 

 better furniture and clothing, and, where it exists, to gratify a love for books and works 

 of art, and to surround his family with the comforts and many of the elegancies of life 

 now enjoyed by other classes, but which a meagre income has placed beyond his reacli. 



It means tliat the coming generation of farmers will labor less, read and think 

 more and to better puipose, and many of the sons and daughters be educated at the higher 

 seats of learning, and thus be enabled to take a creditable part in the world's work, and 

 that all the brightest sons of the country side will not desert the farm, as it will promise 

 something beyond a life of unrequited toil. 



By the invention of labor-saving devices, and their use on farms sufficiently large 

 to warrant the purchase of a full line of improved implements, one man is now able to 

 produce three times as much as forty years ago, and nearly twice as much as twenty 

 years since, and although there seems little reason to expect in future as great reduction 

 in the labor involved in the production of staple crops, it is altogether probable that such 

 further mechanical improvements will be made as will enable a force equal to that now 

 employed on the farms to cnllivate all the land which will be in use in 1910; hence there 

 will be a constant movement of population from farm to town, the rural population aug- 

 menting only in so far as that great uunjbers of working proprietors will, at no remote 

 day, be able to and will employ laborers to till their fields. With a birth-rate quite as 

 great as that obtaining with the urban population the rural districts will contribute not 

 less than 75 per cent, of their increase from births— 6,000,000 before 1910— to the town pop- 

 ulation, necessitating a constant widening of the markets for American manufactures. 



After the middle of the tenth decade we need not be solicitous about a market for 

 farm products, and treaties providing for the free entry of foreign commodities in con- 

 sideration of the free entry into other countries of the products of American farms will 

 need revision in the interest of American manufactures not later than 189-5, as we shall 

 then have only such agricultural staples as cotton, tobacco and, possibly, meats for export. 



Careful computations have been made of the probable increase of population and 

 the area likely to Ije in cultivation at the end of each quinquennial period up to and in- 



