DIVISION AND SPECIALIZATION 169 



acreage, while it is the isolated and scattered 

 farming areas east of the Alleghanies that 

 present the best acreage returns. A glance 

 at the government crop reports is sufficient 

 to show that in the matter of staple crops the 

 acres devoted to them in the East produce 

 more pro rata than the acres devoted to them 

 in the West. As an example, Maine and Ver- 

 mont produced 23 and 25 bushels of wheat per 

 acre respectively in 1912, against the national 

 weighted average of 15.9. The same parallel 

 holds good in corn, in which New England 

 generally averaged 45.3 bushels, against 29.2 

 for the country as a whole. 



Land is not more valuable in the East. The 

 price of land and its productive power, as we 

 have seen, have practically driven wheat cul- 

 ture from western Europe. But in our own 

 East we must seek another reason for the more 

 productive acres. That reason is to be found 

 in the fact we have already alluded to in the 

 present chapter. The lands of our East have 

 been under cultivation longer, acreage hold- 

 ings are smaller, and only those fields some- 

 times only an acre or two in extent are de- 

 voted to small grains and corn which have 

 proved themselves, over the course of many 



