DIVISION AND SPECIALIZATION 149 



In the Old World every farm is a center of 

 learning. Young men in England and on 

 the Continent pay roundly for the privilege 

 of apprenticing themselves to the sons of hun- 

 dreds of generations of farming, though the 

 secrets they learn do not extend beyond the 

 limits of a square mile or a county. They 

 do not matriculate for long courses of study 

 in meteorology, chemistry, bacteriology, etc., 

 which a younger people would study to get at 

 the same end by deductive means. Your Old 

 World farmer, who is so often held up to laugh 

 the American farmer to scorn, is not a "scien- 

 tific farmer," as we have come to use the term. 

 If at home the emigrant practiced the same 

 promiscuous agriculture that he must needs 

 practice in a pioneer land, he would get the 

 same returns as Jeremiah. It is not ethics, 

 it is purely business. The farmers of western 

 Europe have land that will not grow more 

 than 10 or 15 bushels of wheat to the acre. 

 They do not grow wheat on these acres be- 

 cause it does not pay. Other crops pay better. 

 England has been farming practically the 

 same acreage area since 1350, although her 

 recent tax laws have caused some additional 

 land to be thrown into cultivation. That 



