lands in the United States consisted of 792,000,000 acres. Of this area 

 the divisions of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Mon- 

 tana, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming contained 195,700,000 acres 

 of unsurveyed land. Little of Alaska is fitted for general agriculture, 

 while practically all of the rest is semi-arid, available only for grazing 

 or irrigation. We have (subtracting these totals) 50,000,000 acres of 

 surveyed and 36,500,000 acres of unsurveyed land as our actual re- 

 maining stock. And 21,000,000 acres were disposed of in 1907. How 

 long will the remainder last ? No longer can we say that ' * Uncle Sam 

 has enough to give us all a farm." 



Equally threatening is the change in quality. There are two ways 

 in which the productive power of the earth is lessened : first by erosion 

 and the sweeping away of the fertile surface into streams and thence 

 to the sea ; and, second, by exhaustion through wrong methods of 

 cultivation. The former process has gone far. Thousands of acres 

 in the East and South have been made unfit for tillage. North Caro- 

 lina was, a century ago, one of the great agricultural states of the 

 country, and one of the wealthiest. Today as you ride through the 

 South you see everywhere land gullied by torrential rains, red and 

 yellow clay banks exposed where once were fertile fields ; and agricul- 

 ture reduced because its main support has been washed away. Mil- 

 lions of acres, in places to the extent of one tenth of the entire arable 

 area, have been so injured that no industry and no care can restore 

 them. 



Far more ruinous, because universal and continuing in its effects, is 

 the process of soil exhaustion. It is creeping over the land from East 

 to West. The abandoned farms that are now the playthings of the 

 city's rich or the game preserves of patrons of sport, bear witness to 

 the melancholy change. New Hampshire, Vermont, northern New 

 York, show long lists of them. In Western Massachusetts, which once 

 supported a nourishing agriculture, farm properties are now for sale 

 for half the cost of the improvements. Professor Carver, of Harvard, 

 has declared, after a personal examination of the country, that ' ' agri- 

 culture as an .independent industry, able in itself to support a com- 

 munity, does not exist in the hilly parts of New England." 



The same process of deterioration is affecting the farm lands of 

 western New York, Ohio, and Indiana. Where prices of farms should 

 rise by increase of population, in many places they are falling. Be- 

 tween 1880 and 1900 the land values of Ohio shrank $60,000,000. 

 Official investigation of two counties in central New York disclosed r 

 condition of agricultural decay. In one, land was for sale for abou 

 the cost of improvements, and 150 vacant houses were counted in a 

 limited area. In the other the population in 1905 was nearly 4,000 

 less than in 1855. 



Practically identical soil conditions exist in Maryland and Virginia, 

 where lands sell at from $10 to $30 an acre. In a hearing before an 

 industrial commission, the chief of the Bureau of Soils of the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture said : ' ' One of the most important causes of 

 deterioration, and I think I should put this first of all, is the method 

 and system of agriculture that prevails throughout these states. Un- 

 questionably the soil has been abused." The richest region of the 



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