MANAGEMENT 241 



of farming consists of taking a very small parcel of land which 

 comes into one's possession by inheritance or in some other way, 

 arid trying to make a living upon it, not by using methods suited 

 to the economical production of the crop, considered as a crop, 

 but by methods suited to the small size of the farm. Though a 

 reaper or a twine binder is well adapted to the work of harvest- 

 ing wheat, where the farm is large enough, it is entirely un- 

 suited for the harvesting of wheat in such small patches as these 

 peasants can grow. Though the transplanting of young wheat 

 plants or young rice plants is an uneconomical and unremunera- 

 tive method of growing those crops, being a pitiful and woeful 

 waste of human energy, yet considering what tiny patches these 

 peasants are able to grow, and the imperious necessity of making 

 such a living as they can off these small patches, this is a method 

 well adapted to this type of farming because it increases the yield 

 per acre. The fact that the cost of growing wheat by this means 

 is high in terms of human labor, as compared with the cost in 

 more favored countries, does not affect these peasant farmers. 

 They have got to make their living off of such land as they 

 have, or they have got to starve. Therefore they are willing to 

 use these laborious methods in order to get as much as they 

 can from their land. Their living depends upon the productivity 

 of their land rather than upon the productivity of their labor. 

 Superiority of medium-scale farming. The undoubted tend- 

 er, cy in this country is toward the medium scale of production 

 and away from both extremes. While manufacturing, trans- 

 portation, and mining are, generally speaking, tending toward 

 large-scale production, agriculture, the greatest of all our in- 

 dustries, still remains one in which the average man may hope 

 to be self-employed. A few bonanza farms there have -been, 

 but they have generally proved less efficient than those of me- 

 dium size, and the tendency has been for these immense 

 agricultural establishments to break up. There are, to be sure, 



