7 



READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



Presenting these data in form to show the relative rates of 

 increase, we have the following : 



1890 



1900 



Average acreage in all farm crops per farm . . . 

 Average acreage in all farm crops per person culti- 

 vating same 



64.4 

 40.6 



!33-9 

 H2.8 



159-2 

 153-7 



The tendency in machine-using states toward a greater crop 

 acreage per farm and per person is strong and unmistakable. 1 

 The persons who cultivated these crops are classified as follows : 



Presented from the basis of a common denominator, these data 

 show rates of increase as follows : 



1 With the coming of the great harvesters, the planters, cultivators, and 

 scores of other farm mechanisms there was an opportunity to double and quad- 

 ruple the crops, and the farms gradually increased from ten and twenty acres to 

 one and two hundred. George E. Walsh, " Machinery in Agriculture," Cassier's 

 Magazine, Vol. XIX, p. 139 



- This includes 4264 garden and nursery laborers in the returns for 1900 and 

 probably one half as many of the same in the returns for 1S90 and for 1880 ; but 

 they were not separately reported by the Tenth and Eleventh censuses, and hence 

 cannot be discarded. 



3 The returns of the Eleventh Census are known to have been very defective 

 in this, that " farmers' sons and daughters were often reported as farmers rather 

 than as farm laborers, thus very much complicating the occupation returns in 

 this class" (Eetter of Carroll D. Wright, under date of Dec. 29. 1899). That 

 some such error must have crept into the returns is evident on a consideration 

 of the rate of increase of the two classes (i.e. " agricultural laborers " and "farmers, 



