William Fream and Roland Truslove

“ The utilization of by-products, as, for example, the conversion of cotton seed into oil, fertilizers and food for live stock, has become another source of profit.
Great economic and social changes have resulted from this progress. There has been a great division of labour in agriculture. Makers of agricultural implements, of butter and cheese, cotton ginners, grist and wheat millers, are now classed in the United States census reports as manufacturers, but all their work was once done on the farm. The farmer is now more of a specialist and more dependent on other industries than formerly. ”

“ Covering as it does the breadth of the North American continent, with 3,000,000 sq. m. of land surface, not including Alaska and the islands, of which over 800,000,000 acres are in farms and over 400,000,000 in actual cultivation, representing every variety of soil and all the climatic life zones of the world, except the extreme boreal and the hottest tropical, the United States affords an important subject of study in respect of agriculture. Its cotton, wheat and meat are large factors in all markets, and its many other agricultural products are distributed throughout the civilized world. ”

“ A second portion of the inhabitants became engaged in raising, upon limited areas, small crops, garden vegetables and orchard fruits, and in producing butter, milk, poultry and eggs, for the supply of the cities and manufacturing towns which had been built up out of the abundant profits of the primitive agriculture. Still another portion of the agricultural population gradually became occupied in the more careful and intense culture of the cereal crops upon the better lands, the less eligible fields being allowed to spring up in brush and wood. ”

“ But, so far as the northern states are concerned, the enormous profits of this alleged wasteful cultivation have in the main been applied, not to personal consumption, but to permanent improvements,—not indeed to improvements of the land, but to what were still more needed in the situation, namely, improvements upon the land. The first-fruits of a virgin soil have been expended in forms which have vastly enhanced the productive power of the country. ”

“ This marvellous agricultural prosperity of a nation engaged in one of the world’s most formidable wars has no counterpart in modern history. In the decade from 1860 to 1870 there was a steady increase in cultivated area, in agricultural products and in population. The value of the farm lands in the northern states in 1870 exceeded that of 1860 by five dollars an acre. ”

“ Agriculture in the United States
Agriculture has been the chief and most characteristic work of the American people, that in which they have achieved the greatest results in proportion to the resources at command, that in which their economic superiority has been most strikingly manifest. In ten years from 1790, the mean population of the period being 4,500,000, 65,000 sq. ”

“ They have been the same kind of men, out of precisely the same homes, generally with the same early training, as those who filled the learned professions or who were engaged in manufacturing or commercial pursuits. Switzerland and Scotland have, in a degree, approached the United States in this particular; but there is no other considerable country where as much mental activity and alertness has been applied to the cultivation of the soil as to trade and manufactures. ”

“ In pursuance of this view they have freely sacrificed the land, so far as was necessary, in order to save labour, systematically cropping the fields on the principle of obtaining the largest results with the least expenditure, limiting improvements to what was demanded for immediate uses, and caring little about returning to the soil an equivalent for the properties taken from it in the harvests of successive years. ”

“ With the same unit of labour the average quantity of all leading crops produced by modern methods is about five times as great as that produced by the methods employed in 1850, and the cost of production is reduced by one half. From 1880 to 1900 the average number of acres of leading crops per male worker increased from 23·3 to 31·0, or 34%; the number of horses per worker from 1·7 to 2·3, or 35%; and the value of agricultural product per person employed from $286·82 to $454·37, or 58·4 %. ”

“ The acreage and production of wheat have steadily increased. The acreage in Indian corn, the great American crop, reached its highest in 1902, 94,043,613 acres, and its production its highest figure in 1905, 2,707,993,540 bushels.
Producing as the United States does so much more than its people can consume, its exports form a large percentage of some of the crops, as Table XXXVI. shows.
Large portions of some of these crops, like Indian corn and oats, are exported in the form of animals and animal products (meats, lard, hides, &c.) ”

“ The growth of farm area and of capital invested in agriculture was followed by a proportionate increase in the chief crops (Table XXXI.) . The distinguishing feature of the period 1870–1880 was the rate of increase of barley, Indian corn, wheat and oats. Since 1870 the production of nearly all of the farm crops increased more rapidly than the population, the most absolute proof of the substantial prosperity of the people. The increase in population for the fifty years from 1840 to 1890 was 267% ”

“ The exports of cattle increased from 182,750 in 1880 to 331,720 in 1895, or 811/2%, and to 567,806 in 1905 or 210% over 1880, and values from $13,340,000 in 1880 to $30,600,000 in 1895, an increase of 129%, and to $40,590,000 in 1905 or 204%. The average value of cattle exported increased from $19 in 1870 to $73 in 1880 and $92 in 1895, decreasing to $71·50 in 1905. Only the best and heaviest cattle are exported, these, of course, commanding a much higher price than the average of the country.
The total value of farm animals exported from the United States has fluctuated greatly. ”

“ A number of so-called agricultural schools were started between 1850 and 1860 in the eastern and middle states, where the movement made itself most felt, but without trained teachers and suitable methods they accomplished very little. ”

“ Since 1850 there has been a transition from the sickle and the scythe to a machine that in one operation mows, threshes, cleans and sacks the wheat, and in five minutes after touching the standing grain has it ready for the market. ”

“ Better roads, rural free mail delivery, telephone and electric lines are removing the isolation of country life, and to some extent are diminishing the attractions of the cities for the rural population. ”

“ Unfortunately, his knowledge of economic laws has lagged behind his progress in scientific agriculture. The farming class at times have experienced periods of great depression, largely on account of their inability to adjust their crops to changing conditions in the world’s markets, and in such cases have been prone to seek a remedy in radical legislation. ”

“ The hay crop is almost entirely used in this way, and the tendency is to convert more and more of these crops into these higher-priced products. Still, the time is far distant when domestic consumption will come anywhere near overtaking domestic production, especially of wheat and the other cereals. ”

“ The establishment of these colleges was due chiefly to the wisdom and foresight of Justin S. Morrill, who introduced the first bill for their endowment in the House of Representatives on the 14th of December 1857, saw the latest one approved by the president on the 30th of August 1890, and is justly known, therefore, as the father of the American agricultural colleges. ”

“ In many cases railroad building has made the settlement of the public lands possible for the first time, and the building of branch lines, by providing means for transporting products to market, has greatly facilitated the acquisition of other lands. The mileage of railways increased 310·7% between 1870 and 1905 The interesting fact is that this increase corresponds geographically to the increase in farms. ”

“ The certain extension of acreage with the growth of demand and price, the increased use of agricultural implements, and the improvement of methods will be sure to keep up a large surplus for export for many years to come. The Department of Agriculture has found that for home use there were required per head 5·5 bushels of wheat, 28·6 bushels of Indian corn, and 10·7 bushels of oats, the computations being made from the figures for population, production and exports for 1888–1892; in 1905, 6·15 bushels of wheat and wheat-flour, 28·59 bushels of Indian corn and corn-meal. ”

“ The Irish famine of 1846 and the German political troubles of 1848 were followed by an unprecedented emigration to America of highly desirable European labourers, for whom there were cheap and abundant lands. ”

“ In 1864 agricultural prices were from 100 to 200% higher than in 1861, while transportation charges had only slightly advanced and in some instances had actually decreased. In the middle of the war the farmers’ profits were normal ”

“ Table XXXII. gives important facts with regard to the cereal production of the United States between 1870 and 1905. The average farm price of wheat declined, as is shown in that table, from $1·05 per bushel for the decade 1870–1880 to 65·3 cents for the period 1890–1899. The farm prices of the other cereals declined less during the thirty years. ”

“ The average monthly wa e of the agricultural labourer, without board, was $19·50 in 1870, $16·42 in 1880, $18·33 in 1890, $17·70 in 1895, and $20·23 in 1899, when the maximum for any state was $45·10 in Nevada, the minimum $10·06 in South Carolina. ”