DIVISION AND SPECIALIZATION 171 



seldom touching 100, and usually around 80 

 bushels. 



Yet the old line farmers have lived to see 

 prime land selling at $25 to $50 an acre in the 

 East, when speculators, still under stress of 

 the western movement, are willing to pay $100 

 for raw land 300 miles west of Kansas City. 



Aside from the problem of soil fertility it- 

 self, then, the maximum efficiency of the plant 

 of the American farmer will be attained when 

 the last refractory acre has been reclaimed, 

 and each individual area is devoted to the type 

 of agriculture bringing the maximum returns 

 with an accepted standard of cultural methods 

 always interpreted in terms of available 

 markets. Many farms produce noxious weeds 

 in terms of highest efficiency as concerns bulk ; 

 yet, without a market for weeds as such, the 

 farmer supplants them with some less profuse, 

 but more readily marketable, crop. 



As we said in the beginning, ethics does not 

 enter into consideration at all. Farming is a 

 subsidized industry. The nation has pre- 

 sented the farmer with nearly a billion acres 

 as his plant, and capitalized it for him in terms 

 of hunger. It is a fanciful conception to pic- 

 ture the farmer as the trustee of the soil. But 



