DRY-FARMING CONGRESS, WICHITA, 1914 



115 



the constant advance in food prices casts a heavy burden upon other great 

 classes, especially upon the wage-earner. 



The statistics of exports and imports bear eloquent witness to the fail- 

 ure of American agriculture to grow with the rapidity of population. The 

 exceptionally good crops of wheat in the past two or three years have 

 revived our export of that cereal temporarily, but even so we have sent 

 abroad a far smaller proportion of our output than we did 15 or 20 years 

 ago. In 1900 exports of wheat, including flour reduced to a wheat basis, 

 represented one-third of the crop of the United States; from 1910 to 1914 

 little over an eighth. In 1900 we exported more than 300 million pounds 

 of fresh beef. In the last year or two, since the removal of the duty, we 

 have been importing tens of millions of pounds from Argentina. 



It is a fact not generally known that in 1912 the value of our imports 

 of foodstuffs for the first time in our history exceeded the value of our 

 exports of foodstuffs. The balance has again swung the other way, but 

 not very far and perhaps not for long. Of course most of the food we 

 import at present is of a kind that we cannot produce, or to which our 

 soil and climate are less adapted than those of other countries — products 

 like sugar, coffee, tea, cocoa and tropical fruits. At the same time there 

 is a startling difference between the present time and 20 or 30 years ago, 

 when the value of our food exports was more than twice as great as that 

 of the imports. 



There are obviously two ways by which to maintain a balance between 

 growth of population and growth of food supply; check the growth of 

 population or increase that of food production. Of the one means of check- 

 ing the growth of population in our own country, the only one which has 

 been seriously advocated, is restriction of immigration. Immediate action in 

 this direction is rendered unnecessary by the mighty war which is tearing the 

 heart of Europe and that will greatly check migration to the United States 

 for some years to come. Heretofore, however, immigration has been one of 

 the big factors in swelling the number of mouths our farms must feed. Had 

 there been no immigration, poulation would have increased 14 instead of 

 21 percent between 1900 and 1910. If the immigrants went to the farms 

 they would presumably raise at least enough to feed themselves. But prac- 

 tically all of them go into nonfarming industries. 



To increase the production of food more land must be used or more 

 must be got out of the land. Either of these may be accomplished in 

 two ways — by more labor or by more science. 



Nature has set ultimately an absolute limit to the amount of land 

 that can be cultivated. Taken the world over, however, there is still much 

 unusued but usable land. Only about one-fourth of the area of the United 

 States is under the plow. Much of what remains is incapable of cultiva- 

 tion, it is too rocky or too arid. Some of it is better adapted to grazing 

 and to forestry than to tillage. Even in the well-watered sections of the 

 country, however, there is a good deal of land that could and should be brought 

 under the plow — swamp land, cutover timber land, imperfectly utilized pas- 



