78 THE FARMER OF TO-MORROW 



rowed money to buy an Iowa farm on his 

 back-to-the-land venture. He found he could 

 not compete with the man who looked upon 

 his land merely as a means of labor because 

 he got it for nothing or inherited it from his 

 father, like the old druggist. Nor could he 

 compete with the new type of farmer who 

 improved his plant. Jeremiah did not have 

 the time and money. 



Then he must become a Gleaner. If he 

 will consult the figures a few pages back he 

 will find that, in spite of the fact that we still 

 call ourselves an agricultural nation, less than 

 twenty-five per cent, of the land area of the 

 United States is actually producing food. 

 Throw out a solid billion acres of mountain 

 scenery, sand and arid plateaus and we still 

 have the 878,000,000 acres nominally in farms. 

 Cut this last figure in two and we find 400,- 

 000,000 acres of farm land standing idle. 



Germany, a nation which makes no preten- 

 sions as an agricultural state, has subdued 

 forty-five per cent, of her total land area. The 

 Kaiser sent a commission to study us and our 

 industries, and the learned gentlemen went 

 back home and reported that the Fatherland 

 need not fear competition from the United 



