14 THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 



any of the ordinary comforts of life if we had con- 

 served and utilized our opportunities as we should 

 have done. 



And there was no food problem up to a very 

 few years ago. Food was very cheap. This was 

 true of all the staple articles, of meat, vegetables, 

 fruits, poultry, and dairy products. Food was so 

 cheap that we wasted it. Even the poor wasted it 

 as of little value. There were no high-cost-of-liv- 

 ing investigations and no real complaint from the 

 farmer or consumer. 



There is, obviously, land enough to feed ourselves 

 and all our friends, and feed them in abundance. 

 Of that there is no doubt. We could maintain ten 

 times our present population if the land were culti- 

 vated as it is in some portions of the world where 

 intensive agriculture has been perfected. The farm 

 acreage of the United States is nearly seven times 

 that of Germany, with her 67,000,000 people, or of 

 France, with 40,000,000 people. This is without 

 considering the billion odd acres not yet appropri- 

 ated or unavailable for cultivation, which is equal 

 to all the land under tillage at the present time.^ 



iThe total area of the United States, exclusive of Alaska, is 

 3,026,789 square miles or 1,937,144,960 acres. Of this total 290,- 

 759,000 acres remain unappropriated for one reason or another, 

 while 16,522,000 acres are still in pubhc or Indian lands. In 1910 

 there were 6,361,502 farms in the country and 478,451,750 acres 

 in inaproved and 400,446,575 acres in unimproved farms. All told, 

 the farm acreage of the United States in 1910 was 878,798,325 

 acres. Of the total area of the country only one-fourth was in im- 

 proved farms. 



