EDITOHIAL 
IS THE UNITED STATES XTOW that war has blocked 
SELF-CONTAINED? - 1^1 for many nations their 
avenues of importation of food 
stuff, some American's are developing an unwonted—and perhaps 
unjustified—appreciation of our singular position among the 
powers. Outside of Russia, the United States is the only self- 
contained nation. Were our ports closed, they say, we could con¬ 
tinue feeding and clothing our eighty millions as though little or 
nothing had happened. And, as in Russia to-day, so here, the 
people of the interior would scarcely know a war was going on. 
Though this is in a measure true, one often wonders just how 
much the average man understands the part played in the nation’s 
welfare by the farmer and rural life; how much the city dweller 
appreciates the farmer’s possibilities and potentialities. 
The matter was brought vividly to the attention of the public in 
the recent report of the Secretary of Agriculture. “Relatively 
speaking,” Mr. Houston says, “there has been a neglect of rural 
life by the nation. This neglect has perhaps not been conscious or 
willful. We have been so bent on building up great industrial 
centers, in rivaling nations of the world in manufacturing and 
commerce, fostering these by every natural and artificial device 
we could think of. so busy in the race for populous municipal cen¬ 
ters, that we have overlooked the very foundations of our indus¬ 
trial existence. It has been assumed that we have a national 
monopoly in agriculture—that it could take care of itself—and 
for the most part we have Cheerfully left it to do so.” 
Contrasting with that statement is the following: 
“The progress of agriculture reveals itself more particularly in 
its diversification, in the rise of minor crops to larger proportions, 
than in the increased production of staple products. For ex¬ 
ample, dairying in the last generation has become an exceptionallv 
important branch of agricultural economy, the annual production 
including more than one and a half billion pounds of butter, a 
half billion pounds of condensed milk, and a third of a billion 
pounds of cheese, having a value of approximately $600,000,000. 
The production of orchard fruits exceeds 216,000,000 bushels a 
year, with a value of more than $140,000,000. The value of the 
annual production of vegetables is in excess of $400,000,000. The 
production of hay and forage approximates 100,000,000 tons, with 
a value in excess of $800,000,000; the poultry products of the 
nation have reached a point where their annual value is about one- 
half that of the cotton crop at normal valuations, and marked in¬ 
creases are noted in the quantity and value of the cereals. 
“We know that the wheat crop of 1914, of approximately 892,- 
000,000 bushels, is the greatest ever produced in our history, and 
that the crop of oats, barley, rye, potatoes, tobacco and hay are 
unusually large. The cotton crop forecast in October at 15,340,- 
000 bales is the second largest. The apple crop, estimated at 
259,000,000 bushels, is the greatest ever harvested. The total 
production of six leading cereals is estimated to have been 5,000,- 
000,000 bushels, or about 428,000,000 bushels in excess of the 
crop of 1913. For the country as a whole, the crop yields per 
acre were 2.3 per cent better than the average for the past ten 
years. The average yield per acre of all the staple crops was 9.4 
per cent greater than 1913, and, except for corn, oats and flax 
seed, greater than the ten-year average. 
WHERE DECREASE 44 T)UT, after all our efforts, while 
COMES X) there is an increased diversi¬ 
fication of agriculture, and both a 
relative and absolute increase in important products, such as 
wheat, forage crops, fruits, dairy products and poultry, we still 
note not only a relative, but also an absolute decrease in a number 
of our important staple food products, such as corn and meats. 
In the former in the last fifteen years there has been no substan¬ 
tial advance. In cattle, sheep and hogs there has been an abso¬ 
lute decline—in cattle, from the census year of 1899 to that of 
1909, of from 50,000,000 head to 41,000,000; in sheep of from 
61,000,000 to 52,000,000; in hogs, of from 63,000,000 to 58,000,- 
000. Since 1909 the tendency has been downward, and yet during 
the period since 1899 the population has increased over 20,000,000. 
This situation exists not in a crowded country, but in one which 
is still in a measure being pioneered; in one which, with 935,000,- 
000 acres of arable land, has only 400,000,000, or 45 per cent, 
under cultivation, and in one in which the population per square 
mile does not exceed thirty-one, and ranges from 0.7 persons in 
Nevada to 508 in Rhode Island. 
“Just what the trouble is no one is yet sufficiently informed to 
say. It can scarcely be that the American farmer has not as much 
intelligence as the farmer of other nations. It is true that the 
American farmer does not produce as much per acre as the farmer 
in a number of civilized nations, but production per acre is not the 
American standard. The standard is the amount of produce for 
each person engaged in agriculture, and by this test the American 
farmer appears to be from two to six times as efficient as most 
of his competitors. Relatively speaking, extensive farming is 
still economically the sound program in our agriculture, but now it 
is becoming increasingly apparent that the aim must be, while 
maintaining supremacy in production for each person, to establish 
supremacy in production for each acre.” 
RURAL LIFE UNDER X N inch of such statistics and 
INVESTIGATION IY facts is worth pages of theoriz¬ 
ing, yet there are some salient con¬ 
clusions to draw at this point. “The American farmers,” the re¬ 
port goes on to say, “are more prosperous than any other farming 
class in the world. As a class they are certainly as prosperous 
as any other section of the people ; as prosperous as the merchants, 
the clerks, or the mechanics.” All of which corroborates the re¬ 
sults of an investigation made by House and Garden recently. 
The earning power of the farmers of New York State were com¬ 
pared to their social and wage-earning parallels in the city, and it 
was found that, whereas but few farmers make more than their 
living and overhead expenses, their lot is no worse than that of 
thousands of city dwellers. The farmer lives a more natural 
life and has the advantages of open-air work and physical ex¬ 
ercise, as against the tenement and flat life of the city worker and 
labor in factories. The situation seems to resolve itself into 
“de gustibus!” 
That the rural life is not increasing is evident from a final 
statement in Mr. Houston’s report: the population of the nation 
in the last fifteen years has increased 23,000,000; the strictly rural 
districts have shown an increase of perhaps less than 6,000,000. 
It is futile to cite the multitude of reasons why rural life is not 
growing in popularity, though the fact remains that our much- 
boasted ability to feed and clothe our own will not stand in¬ 
vestigation. We have overproduced this year, and still the high 
cost of living has not been reduced. Is it the farmer’s fault or 
the fault of those who own the farm? One case investigated by 
a representative of House and Garden made the following reply 
to the question of crops: “I make more money in a poor year 
than a good one. I’m not growing for crop results, but for crop 
prices.” Until situations such as this are radically changed we 
cannot hope for a growth in the rural population, nor need we 
boast of our self-sufficiency. 
112 
n 
