OUR AGRICULTURAL POSSIBILITIES 15 



France almost feeds herself, while in Germany, with 

 all her intensive agriculture, there are great stretches 

 of land that are held in great estates and are in a 

 backward state of cultivation; and Germany could 

 be placed inside the State of Texas and leave enough 

 room round about the edges for Switzerland. 



We have not yet begun to crowd one another in 

 this countiy, for people are living at the rate of only 

 33 per square mile. In little Belgium, the land of 

 intensive agriculture, there are 671 persons to the 

 square mile; in France there are 191; in the United 

 Kingdom, 379.47; in Austria-Hungary, 197.31; in 

 Switzerland, 236.97, and in Denmark, which coun- 

 try feeds herself and contributes a great part of the 

 food supply of Great Britain and Germany, there 

 are 183.56 persons per square mile. 



Only a small part of the land in the United States 

 is cultivated at all, and a much greater part is 

 cultivated wastefully or inadequately. Only about 

 one-half of our cultivable area is under cultivation. 

 Even in the State of New York, with the best and 

 most extravagant market in the world at its doors, 

 only 37 per cent, of the agricultm'al acreage is under 

 cultivation, or 8,200,000 acres out of 22,000,000 

 acres. And in that State, with its population of 

 10,000,000 people, only 375,000 are agricultm-alists, 

 and 9,625,000 are engaged in other pursuits. 



While we have land in abundance and of the most 

 fertile kind, while we have invented and perfected 



