198 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



Any answer that might be given to this question would, of neces- 

 sity, be very largely conjectural. What with improvements in agri- 

 cultural methods and appliances, which are certain to be sooner 

 apprehended and more widely used here than anywhere else in the 

 world; what with the rapid extension of our railway lines; what with 

 the intensification of culture, either through the subdivision of existing 

 landed properties or through the multiplication of hired hands upon 

 the larger farms, I see no reason to doubt that throughout the first half 

 of the coming century the production of the chief staples of American 

 agriculture might go on increasing, not only absolutely, but even per 

 capita of population, as it has increased from 1800 to the present time, 

 new lands, now nominally occupied, but not cultivated up to a half, 

 a quarter, or a tithe of their capability, coming in, not only to make 

 good the loss by exhaustion of lands now of full bearing virtue, but to 

 allow the increase of our population up to the gigantic total of a hun- 

 dred or a hundred and twenty-five millions without impairing our 

 ability to export as largely and as variously of agricultural produce 

 as today. 



But there is even a better prospect for our agriculture than this. 

 The powerful reasons, economical and 'political, which have in the 

 past justified the cultivation of the soil, in some degree at the expense 

 of future generations, have mainly ceased to exist, and will soon dis- 

 appear altogether. The country, in its arable parts, is settled, and 

 the line of population now rests near the base of the great sterile 

 mountains which occupy so large a portion of the continent. The 

 accumulation of capital out of the profits of American agriculture 

 under the system of cropping that has been described have been so 

 great at the North and West as even to keep ahead of the occasions for 

 their remunerative investment, as is shown by a falling rate of interest; 

 and there is no longer any reason to be found in the scarcity of capital 

 for postponing the systematic cultivation of the soil. Lastly, the 

 political reasons which made the early settlement of the country so 

 urgently desirable are no longer of force. 



With adequate labor power and capital, and with all national 

 exigencies satisfied, the time has come when economical and political 

 ierations alike demand that the soil bequeathed to this gem-ra- 

 tion, or Dpi i,< <; up by its own exertions, shall hereafter be deemed and 

 tf a fund in trust for the American people through all time to 

 not to be diminished or impaired for the selfish enjoyment of 

 the immediate possessors. 



