14 OUTLINES OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



3. "The experience of Holland in draining Haarlem Lake may- 

 serve as an example. This was a body of water covering 42,000 

 acres at an average depth of over 13 feet. Such an undertaking was 

 relatively greater in 1848 than it would be now and was all the more 

 difficult because the bottom of the lake was below sea-level, and all 

 the water had to be lifted out of it." Just before the outbreak of the 

 European war Holland was planning an enormous undertaking of this 

 sort. Does this point to large possibilities at the mouth of the 

 Mississippi? elsewhere? Is it conceivable that much of the water 

 which now comes down our rivers might be impounded at flood time 

 and pumped back over the land during periods of scant rainfall? 

 How would the coming of cheaper mechanical power affect this ? 



4. "It is well known that pioneer homesteads were generally 

 located by springs ; that in the course of a decade or two many of the 

 springs failed, and shallow wells were dug for domestic supply; and 

 that these wells in turn frequently failed and were either deepened 

 or replaced by drilled wells. A careful investigation of conditions for 

 about twenty years back shows a very general lowering of the water 

 table throughout the older settled portions of the Mississippi Valley 

 3.87 feet in Wisconsin, 3.45 in Minnesota, 1.94 in Tennessee, and 

 so on. For eight states this seems to indicate an average lowering 

 equivalent to 10. 5 feet in the eighty years since permanent settlement 

 and cultivation began. The water supply of a country is its agricul- 

 tural capital, and these figures make clear the fact that the reserve 

 agricultural capital of the country is shrinking. " Is this the real 

 limiting factor in our agriculture? If so, what are we going to do 

 about it? 



5. "There are in this country a number of important sources of 

 potash salts, and, owing to the conditions brought on by the European 

 war, they are in a way to be developed on a scale which offers hope 

 that the American farmer may have a home supply of potash in the not 

 distant future." Explain. Should we include deposits of phosphate, 

 potash, and other mineral fertilizers as a part of the natural resources 

 of agriculture? Would the discovery of a potash bed enlarge our 

 land resources as truly as the discovery of an unknown island ? 



6. "The farmer wants extent of land and he wants his land to be 

 fertile, but what is sometimes even more significant than these quali- 

 ties is the location of the farm which he is to cultivate." Aside from 

 its relation to climate, is location a factor in the productivity of land ? 

 value productivity or technical productivity ? May these economic 

 qualities of land which are due to location be changed with the passage 

 of time ? Illustrate. 



7. "The profitable limit to intensive cultivation is reached at the 

 point where the return to the last unit of labor and the last unit of 



