96 RURAL LIFE IN CANADA 



eighth part of that which is gathered at present."* 

 But great as has been the progress of the art of farming 

 since the period when the yield was one-eighth of that 

 now obtained from equal areas of arable land, relatively 

 to the advance in world progress in general since the 

 advent of the modern industrial world, agriculture is 

 falling behind. There has not been the multiplying 

 of efficiency in this field that there has been in the pro- 

 duction of cotton or of steel. Marvellous as has been 

 the progress in the development of better varieties of 

 grain for instance, our new Canadian barley, of 

 which a recent issue of World's Work editorially 

 says : " Twelve grains of barley have encircled the 

 earth twelve grains of barley borrowed from Canada 

 by the University of Wisconsin have sent millions of 

 their progeny abroad over our land. Their fame has 

 made this new race sought even as far as Russia . . . 

 It has added many millions to the profit of the man on 

 the soil," it has not kept pace with, for example, the 

 advance in the conquest of disease by modern medical 

 science. And this relative slackening of pace is much 

 greater among the main body of agriculturists than 

 among its leading exponents. The problem of the 

 farm, from the standpoint of agriculture as an art, is 

 simply this: how to apply all the elements of modern 

 efficiency as wrought out in the industrial world as a 

 whole through invention and organization to that art 

 throughout its whole extent. Where this is done suc- 

 cessfully, as in Denmark, the rural problem is not felt. 



So great is this relative failure of farming as an occu- 

 pation that farm lands have slight value to the farmer 



* Thorold Rogers, " Manual of Political Economy," p. 158. 



