FACTORS OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION 155 



agricultural land is put to these uses when it might be made more 

 productive under tillage, and when it is needed as a source of 

 food, it is an undoubted sign of bad political conditions. They 

 who are permitted thus to pervert good land to these inferior 

 uses ought at least to pay for the privilege. They ought, to say 

 the least, to pay a tax on such land equal to that which it would 

 yield, with its improvements, if it were brought under the plow. 

 If this remedy were applied, it would, of course, not affect that 

 land which is not suited to agriculture, but it would tend at 

 least to force into agriculture such lands as were suited. 



III. WAYS OF ECONOMIZING LAND (CONTINUED) 



\ 



Getting a larger product per acre. It is not always easy, how- 

 ever, to tell the difference between bringing waste land under 

 cultivation and increasing the productivity of land already in 

 use. Land formerly used only for grazing, but now brought 

 under the plow either by dry farming or irrigation, may some- 

 times be regarded as reclaimed land and sometimes as land 

 brought to a higher state of productiveness. The arid lands of 

 the Far West are sometimes used for pasturage even when the 

 herbage is so scant as to require a great many acres to supply 

 food for one diligent sheep. W 7 hen such lands are brought 

 under irrigation and made to produce immense crops of corn 

 and alfalfa, it is quite proper to speak of them as reclaimed 

 lands. But when land farther east, where rainfall and herbage 

 are a little more abundant, and where the pasturage is therefore 

 tolerably good, is brought under the plow by the methods of 

 dry farming and made to produce a crop of wheat every second 

 year, it is doubtful if this can properly be called reclaimed land, 

 even though its productivity be somewhat increased. The prob- 

 lem of bringing waste land into use, therefore, shades off into 

 the problem of getting a larger product from each acre, which 

 is another way of economizing land. 



