Birds and the Fruit-Farm 289 



land. This means that quite one-fifth of all land 

 called ''farm land," throughout the United States, 

 is unimproved. If we consider what "improved" 

 really means as applied to land in our country, we 

 ;must admit that farming here is as yet extensive 

 rather than intensive, and that bad farming is the 

 ; common practice. 



During the last twenty years an amount of 

 capital far beyond accurate computation has gone 

 into farming, and this form of investment has only 

 begim. The city man who puts $30,000 into a 

 farm may now be found in every prosperous 

 farming community. Hundreds, thousands of 

 farms — ^fruit, stock, poultry, truck, cranberry, and 

 so on through the list — are owned and operated 

 by rich men who made their money in banking, 

 manufacturing, railroading, medicine, politics, 

 patents, speculation; with them the ''get-back-to- 

 the-land " instinct is dominant. In the Lake Shore 

 Valley, and in other valleys, scores of such men 

 may be found and almost without exception their 

 farms are highly profitable. All over the United 

 States such men may be found, and because of 

 them a new profession, a new vocation, exists in 

 America, that of "farm manager," "superinten- 

 dent of the fruit-farm," "horticulturist," and 

 thousands of young men are in training on farms 

 and at agricultiu*al colleges and special schools to 

 fill these positions. This astonishing change in 

 affairs goes far to explain how it happens that the 

 value of farm property increased between 1900 and 

 19 



