No. 4.] OUR AGRICULTURAL ADVANCE. 



91 



The rapid and regular increase in productiveness as the 

 farms grow smaller is too striking to be disregarded or 

 denied. We should easily be justified in founding upon 

 such data the law of productivity, which might bo formu- 

 lated as follows : the productivity of farm land is inversely 

 proportional to the size of the farm. It may be seen that 

 this law is almost mathematically and exactly correct, ac- 

 cording to the foregoing figures. 



Statistics of Population. 

 Before leaving this part of the subject, I must ask the 

 privilege of a slight digression, in order to speak of the 

 statistics of population and their relation to the business of 

 farming. The population of the United States in 1900 

 was reported to be a trifle over 70,000,000, nearly 3,000,- 

 000 of which belonged to the Commonwealth of Massachu- 

 setts. Now, something more than 37 per cent of this 

 76,000,000 men and women live in cities, and this percent- 

 age is steadily increasing. In Massachusetts almost 87 per 

 cent of the entire population belongs to the cities, and this 

 proportion is also rapidly increasing. This will be seen at 

 a glance by comparing the figures for twenty years. Here- 

 with are given the percentages of urban population, com- 

 puted on the basis of total population : — 



