136 PRINCIPLES OF RURAL ECONOMICS 



Considerable portions of the rocky land of this country can 

 be profitably utilized for pasturage. This is particularly true 

 where these lands are contiguous to or near other lands suitable 

 for the growing of winter forage. In this respect the rocky and 

 semimountainous lands of the West and South are well situated,- 

 but those of New England are at some disadvantage. Good 

 tillable land in New England can be utilized to such advantage 

 for the growing of vegetables and the production of milk that it 

 is usually relatively unprofitable to utilize it for the growing of 

 winter forage. Even where the land is smooth enough to make 

 the growing of hay an economic possibility it is usually found 

 so profitable to sell the hay to the city buyers that the farmer 

 finds it relatively unprofitable to feed it to animals. Much ex- 

 cellent pasture land among the New England hills is thus 

 allowed to go to waste or to grow up to brush and timber, simply 

 because no economical method has been found for bringing the 

 animals through the long winter. However, in almost every 

 part of the world where the cattle industry has had a consider- 

 able development it has been found profitable to drive or trans- 

 port the cattle considerable distances from summer to winter 

 pasture, or from pasture to feed lot. In the mountainous part of 

 Europe, for example, cattle are driven in considerable numbers 

 up to the hills and mountains for summer pasture, and back to 

 the valleys to be wintered on the products of the fertile farms. 

 With the growing scarcity of meat it will be found more and 

 more profitable to utilize the rocky pastures of the Atlantic 

 states in a similar way. 



Even pasturage, however, is a less economical use of land than 

 tillage, wherever tillage is possible, in the sense that a larger food 

 supply per acre is secured by tillage than by pasturage. It is 

 only where the land is unsuitable for tillage, or where the pop- 

 ulation is so sparse that a large product per acre is a matter of 

 little importance, that it becomes economical to utilize land as 



