SOME IMPENDING CHANGES. 21 



In the United States we must, in order to secure any i>?rnianent increase in the 

 wlieat urea, unduly diminisli tlie area in staples just as essential and even more difUcult 

 to iniporl, altluiugli the iniiiortatioii of an adequate supjily of wheat does not promise to 

 be au easy task, as supplies — throughout the world— are certain to be so short as to ensure 

 an eager scramble among the buying nations — including all Kurope west and south of 

 Hungary — and still leave an unsatisfactory deficit. 



Such will be some of the results following the exhaustion of the arable portion of 

 the public domain of the United States, accompanied by much higher prices for the agri- 

 cultural products of temperate climates, a great world-wide and enduring advance in the 

 value of lands in the temperate zones susceptible of profitable cultivation, and the un- 

 exam|)led prosperity of the landlord and cultivating proprietor. 



Of late years the returns of the American farmer and the European cultivator have 

 been but little more than sufficient to attbrd a meagre subsistence; but granting the ap- 

 proximate correctness of tlie estimates made, it is inevitable that the relations of supply 

 and demand should, in the immediate future, undergo such radical changes as to cause 

 prices to advance stendily and rapidly to fifty, one hundred and po-isibly two hundred 

 per cent, above tlie level now obtaining; and such adv.nice, liowever great it may prove 

 to be, will be so much added to the landlord's rentand thecultivator'si^rofit. As present 

 prices cover the cost of production, and sucli cost is far more likely to diminisii than aug- 

 ment, the .idvauce in the price of farm products will accurately measure the ad" 

 vance in the value of land. Hence if the returns now cover the cost of production 

 witli wheat selling at 90 cents per bushel and the average yield twelve bushels per acre, 

 ■when it shall sell for ^l.SO per bushel the returns will have increased by $10.80 per acre, 

 and assuming that only one-lialf the farm will be so employed as to make such net returns 

 and that money— twenty years hence — will, on real estate security, loan at three and one- 

 half per cent, we find the value of such lauds to be quite ».].50 per acre and equaling the 

 value reached by the lands of Prance jirior to the great shrinkage in value occasioned by 

 the low prices for farm products prevailing In recent years. On this basis, should the 

 farms and gardens of the United States, in 1910, cover au area of 7.50.000,000 acres (includ- 

 ing pasture, wcmdl ind and waste), as is altogether probable, their value, exclusive of the 

 live stock and inii)lements. will reach the enormous sum of $112, .500, 000, 000 and their 

 owners will, with the owners of other real estate, form a great lauded interest which, in 

 its magnitude, will long exceed and overshadow all others and with an influence far more 

 pronounced than now, although their numbers will be proportionate less, make for stead- 

 iness, peace and order in social industrial and political life. 



Tne converse of tliis class is likely to be found in the ranks of labor increasing more 

 rapidly than other of the social elements by reason of the continuance, for some years, of 

 immigration, of an inability to make further drafts from the ranks of labor to the liublic 

 lands, and the advance of land values precluding the purchase, by this class, of as many 

 improved farms as heretofore, and by large accessions from a rural population that, un- 

 able to open new farms, increases four or five times as fast as rural employments, and 

 which must in the absence of railway construction and forests to be felled, of necessity 

 swell prodigiously the increasing myriads seeding employment in mine, factory and forge. 



Adding to an industrial population, now nearly sufficient to supply all the warej 

 Imported, three-fourths the increase of the rural districts, we shall, before 1910, in this 

 manner alone, swell the urban population by more than 0,000,000; or, in other words, of a 

 total iucrea.'e of 27.000,000 during the next twenty years, fully 25,000,000 will be found, 

 witb other 40 000.000, in mine, village, town and city. 



To employ these people our rulers must, in the absence of the safety-valve hereto- 

 fore existing in the public domain, find means of opening distant markets which shall 

 absorb the labor of this vast force multiplied by the progressive improvement and em- 

 ployment of machinery which each year will bring. 



Europe has long confronted a somewhat similar .state of afTairs, with the very im- 

 portant diftereuce, however, that America has been able to furnish sufficieut grain and 

 meat to keep the price of food at a much lower level than seems longer possible. 



