CROP YIELDS AND PRICES 119 



From 1890 to 19 10 the population of these seven cities, in- 

 cluding all the territory now in New York City, increased 78 per 

 cent. The receipts of eggs increased 183 per cent. We are 

 substituting eggs for beef. 



When population becomes very dense,' roughage and waste 

 products will be used for producing milk. After we have kept all 

 the dairy cows that are needed, we will raise as many beef cattle as 

 can be kept on the remaining supply of roughage and pasture. We 

 are feeding animals less and less on grain that is good for human 

 food. The decreasing number of beef cattle and the tendency to 

 market steers at a younger age are an expression of this condition. 



All these changes mean that some persons who once ate meat 

 must now eat less of it. Unfortunately the manual laborers, who 

 are the very ones most in need of meat, are the first to have to go 

 without. We are getting the first intimation of the conditions that 

 have long existed in all densely populated countries. Probably we 

 can support the vast hordes of people that are estimated as our 

 possible future population, but they will not live so well as we live. 



Location of factories in villages and small cities. Compara- 

 tively few persons go from city to country. Such a movement is 

 neither necessary nor desirable. It is very difficult for grown per- 

 sons who have never lived on a farm to become farmers. The 

 best time to learn to farm is in one's youth. But large numbers 

 of persons who are employed in towns and cities now live where 

 they can have land enough to raise part of their food. By locat- 

 ing industries in smaller places and by the increase of trolley lines 

 it is made possible for many workers to live on small plots of 

 ground that will provide for a garden and hens, and sometimes 

 for a cow. This enables the family to greatly reduce the cost of 

 living. At the same time it provides the best kind of work for 

 the children. The number of farms of less than 20 acres in- 

 creased 25 per cent in the last ten years. A very large proportion 

 of these places are occupied by persons who are employed at 

 some industry other than farming. In a single county without 

 any large cities Tompkins County, New York there are 

 about 500 such places. 1 



1 Cornell University Agr. Exp. Sta., liulletin 295, p. 562. 



