74 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



much more per acre for human food as a surplus to sell 

 than the small ones. If a horse; cuts 5 acres of hay, he eats 

 the whole thing up, pretty nearly, but when a horse is farm- 

 ing 30 acres of crops, perhaps 10 or 15 of that will be hay, — 

 and it runs more than that in !New England, — and then 

 he doesn't eat it all. The yield per acre is better on the 

 larger farms, or just as good, and since there are fewer 

 horses per acre, they don't eat it all up, and the larger also 

 contributes more to human food. Now, if you want to get 

 to the bottom end of nowhere, just take, for example, Rus- 

 sia, or go further, to China, and see what they are doing 

 there. Professor Gilmore, who has worked over there, says 

 their greatest problem is the lack of men. They can't build 

 railroads because every man has to work on the farm to 

 keep himself. Each gets his little bit of a farm, and man- 

 ages to scratch out a bare living for himself; he doesn't 

 have anything to sell to feed the fellows who build the rail- 

 roads. You have got to have a smaller and smaller per- 

 centage of our population oij the soil, or civilization stops. 

 With 100 per cent farmers we have no civilization; and the 

 smaller the percentage of farmers, the higher the civilization. 

 In America one man raises food enough to feed five families, 

 while in China three men raise onlv enough to feed four 

 families, and so they haven't men enough to build their rail- 

 roads. They have got to open up Manchuria and get some 

 farms big| enough so that one man will raise enough to feed 

 two or three, and until they can release men from those little 

 truck patches they won't be building any railroads. 



Oh, I had forgotten. There was that other question of 

 Mr. Race's in regard to home value. The figures I am giving 

 you are what the farmer gets for his labor. If he does not 

 have any other source of income than the farm he must get 

 a reasonable wage before he can have much of a home value 

 there. The farmers who don't get more than $2 a day for 

 wages, besides interest on their capital, are not living in a 

 home that is very valuable, and the sons aren't impressed 

 with the desirability of that sort of home. We have got to 

 have a reasonable income, and your little farm doesn't give 

 it. I showed you one of 11 acres, but that is a muck patch. 



