329 
The total improved farm lands in the United States amount 
to 477,448,000 acres, which is an increase in the last ten years 
of 62,949,000, or 15.2 per cent. The product per acre actually 
cultivated increased in the last ten years 1 per cent, a year, or 
10 per cent. The total product increased in ten years nearly 20 
per cent. 
The population in this same time increased 21 per cent. If 
the population continues to increase at its present rate, we shall 
have in 50 years double the number of people we now have. It 
is necessary, then, that not only our acreage but also oui' product 
per acre must increase proportionately so that our people may be 
fed. We must realize that the best land and the land easiest to 
cultivate has been taken up and cultivated, and that the additions 
to improved lands and to total acreage in the future must be 
of land much more expensive to prepare for tillage. The in- 
crease per acre of the product, too, must be steady each year, 
yet each year an increase becomes more difficult. Still, even in 
the face of these facts, there is no occasion for discouragement. 
We are going to remain a self-supporting country and raise 
food enough within our borders to feed our people. When we 
consider that in Germany and Great Britain crops are raised 
from land which has been in cultivation for 1,000 years, .xnd 
that these lands are made to produce more than two and three 
times per acre what the comparatively fresh lands in this country 
produce in the best States, it becomes very apparent that we 
shall be able to meet the exigency by better systems of farming 
and more intense and careful and industrious cultivation. The 
theory seems to have been in times past that soils become ex- 
hausted by constant cultivation ; but the result in Europe, where 
acres under constant use for producing crops for ten centuries 
are made now to produce crops three times those of this coun- 
try, shows that there is nothing in this theory, and that success- 
ful farming can be continued on land long in use, and that great 
crops can be raised and garnered from it if only it be treated 
scientifically and in accordance with its necessity. There is 
nothing peculiar about soils in Europe that gives the great yield 
per acre there and prevents its possibility in the United States. 
On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that the applica- 
tion of the same methods would produce just as large crops here 
as abroad. 
One of the great reasons for discouragement felt by many 
who have written on this subject is found in the movement of the 
population from farm to city. This has reached such a point 
that the urban population is now 46 per cent, of the total, while 
the rural population is but 54 per cent., counting as .irban all 
who live in cities exceeding 2,500 inhabitants. This movement 
has been persistent, and has made it very difficult for the farmers 
to secure adequate agricultural labor, with an increase in the 
price of labor which naturally follows such a condition. Still 
