INTERNATIONAL CONSOLIDATION 209 



by the plow, but also by surveyor's chain, awaiting the 

 time when adequate irrigation works can be constructed. 

 Breaking up of the old slave plantations in the South, which 

 has taken place since the Civil War, has increased the number 

 of small farms in the country very considerably. The opera- 

 tion of the well-known "Homestead Law" created again over 

 3,000,000 small farms. The immense grants of lands to rail- 

 roads and for the benefit of schools, now surpassing 750,000,000 

 acres, resulted again in the creation of several millions of 

 small farms, and even great "bonanza farms," which have had 

 their origin in the same stupendous grants, are gradually 

 breaking up into .thousands of small farms. So long as there 

 is in the world more land than is required to produce neces- 

 sary agricultural produce, the ownership of the land means 

 very little and conveys very little advantage. So long as the 

 ownership of the land can be obtained so easily as in the 

 United States and in the whole of America generally, this 

 ownership economically amounts to almost nothing. With im- 

 proved machinery and improved methods of agriculture, the 

 amount of land required for a given amount of product grows 

 continually less. With modern methods of intensive agricul- 

 tural production — approximately speaking — Texas alone could 

 supply the present world's demand for cotton, and the Amer- 

 ican "wheat belt" certainly could produce all the wheat neces- 

 sary to satisfy the wants of the population of the globe. If the 

 latter will ever become so increased as to require the entire 

 surface of the earth for support it is extremely doubtful, and 

 presents in our days the matter of merely theoretical interest 

 anyway. It seems, however, that a much larger portion of the 

 available land of the world is already under tillage, when cul- 

 tivated intensively, than will be required for the support of 

 any population that can appear for many generations. Mean- 

 while farm laborers in the United States become proportion- 

 ately scarcer and scarcer every hour. Every year, particularly 

 when harvesting season approaches, the farmers of the coun- 

 try, especially in the Central West, complain more and more 

 insistively that good farm hands are more and more difficult 

 secure. While the American farmer needs more and more 

 intelligent workmen, because the agricultural machinery be- 



