[Footnote 7:  Sec Vol.  I, p. 225, and note 11.]

[Footnote 8:  See Vol.  I, p. 206.]

[Footnote 9:  See Vol.  I, p. 227, note, for figures on owners and farm laborers.]

CHAPTER 26

PROBLEMS OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS

Sec. 1.  Size of farms, and total farming area.  Sec. 2.  Influences acting upon the size of farms.  Sec. 3.  Self-sufficing versus commercial farming.  Sec. 4.  Farming viewed as a capitalistic enterprise.  Sec. 5.  Diversified versus specialized farming.  Sec. 6.  Conditions favoring diversified farming.  Sec. 7.  Intensive farming in Europe and America.  Sec. 8.  Prospect of more intensive cultivation of land in America.  Sec. 9.  The new agriculture.  Sec. 10.  Difficulty of cooeperation among farmers.  Sec. 11.  Rapid growth of farmers’ selling cooeperation.  Sec. 12.  Some economic features of farmers’ selling cooeperation.  Sec. 13.  Cooeperation in buying.  Sec. 14.  Need of agricultural credit.  Sec. 15.  Recent provisions for farm loans.

Sec. 1. #Size of farms, and total farming area#.  The average area of farms has varied from a maximum of 203 acres, in 1850 (the first figures), to a minimum of 134 acres in 1880, being 138 acres in 1910.  A better index, perhaps, is the average improved area per farm, which has been more nearly stationary, varying from a maximum of 80 acres in 1860 to a minimum of 71 acres in 1870 and 1880, being 75 acres in 1910.  Here again the statistics require interpretation, for in the spread of the frontier the addition of large farms in the arid and semi-arid regions may raise the average, or the breaking up of large plantations in the South may decrease the average, without this indicating any essential change in the technical conditions of farming in the country generally.  Since about 1900 the total area in farms has increased very slowly.  Between 1900 and 1910 the increase was only 4.8 per cent; whereas a larger increase occurred in the area of improved land, 15.4 per cent, and the unimproved area in farms decreased 5.6.  Future changes of farm areas may be expected to be of this same nature, mainly in the improvement of rough pastures, swamps, partly cleared woodlands, and desert lands awaiting irrigation.  An increasing population will have to be provided with food and other products of agriculture on a farming area that henceforth will be increasing less rapidly than it has in the past and than the population increases.

Sec. 2. #Influences acting upon the size of farms#.  In these averages for the whole country many conflicting influences unite and neutralize each other.  Making for smaller farms is the breaking up of large grazing areas in the West into smaller general purpose farms or irrigated fruit districts, and of larger general farms in the North and East into small poultry, flower, and fruit farms.  Opposed to this is a movement toward the merging of farms of 50 to 100 acres into