192 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



the cost of improvements, and 150 vacant houses were counted in a 

 limited area; in the other, the population in 1905 was nearly 4,000 

 less than it was in 1855. 



Practically identical soil conditions exist in Maryland and Vir- 

 ginia, where lands sell at from $10 to $30 an acre. In a hearing before 

 an industrial commission, the chief of the Bureau of Soils of the 

 Department of Agriculture said: "One of the most important causes 

 of deterioration, and I think I should put this first of all, is the method 

 and system of agriculture that prevails throughout these states. 

 Unquestionably the soil has been abused." The richest region of the 

 West is no more exempt than New England or the South. The soil 

 of the West is being reduced in agricultural potency by exactly the 

 same processes which have driven the farmer of the East, with all his 

 advantage of nearness to markets, practically from the field. 



Within the last forty years a great part of the richest land in the 

 country has been brought under cultivation. We should, therefore, 

 in the same time have raised proportionately the yield of our principal 

 crops per acre, because the yield of old lands, if properly treated, 

 tends to increase rather than to diminish. The year 1906 was one of 

 large crops and can scarcely be taken as a standard. We produced, 

 for example, more corn that year than had ever been grown in the 

 United States in a single year before. But the average yield per acre 

 was less than it was in 1872. We are barely keeping the acre-product 

 stationary. The average wheat crop of the country now ranges from 

 12 J bushels in ordinary years to 15 bushels per acre in the best seasons. 

 And so it is on down the line. 



But the fact of soil waste becomes startlingly evident when we 

 examine the record of some states where single cropping and other 

 agricultural abuses have been prevalent. Take the case of wheat, the 

 mainstay of single-crop abuse. Many of us can remember when New 

 York was the great wheat-producing state of the Union. The average 

 yield of wheat per acre in New York for the last ten years was about 

 1 8 bushels. For the first five years of that ten-year period it was 

 18.4 bushels, and for the last five years 17 .4 bushels. Farther west, 

 Kansas takes high rank as a wheat-producer. Its average yield per 

 acre for the last ten years was 14.16 bushels. For the first five of 

 those years it was 15.14, and for the last five years 13.18. lip in the 

 Northwest, Minnesota wheat has made a name all over the world. 

 Her average yield per acre for the same ten years was 12 .96 bushels. 

 For the first five years it was 13.12, and for the last five 12.8. We 



