larger farms of 300 acres, more or less.  The economic cause of this movement is interesting and important.  The typical and economic size of farms when the Atlantic states were settled, was determined by the use of hand tools, which permitted a man and his family to operate a farm of about 75 acres of which about half was tilled and the rest was in permanent pasture and woodland.  The fields were small and were laid out irregularly, which was no disadvantage for hand cultivation.  But for the most economic use of land in field crops and under more modern conditions it is necessary to have pretty level fields, of regular rectangular shape.  The farm unit should be of such extent as to permit of the proper use of the soil by rotation of crops, and to employ fully the best modern labor-saving machinery for each purpose.  Numerous recent agricultural surveys point to the conclusion that for general farming this unit is a comparatively large area of about 300 acres.

These conditions offer a reward to those agricultural enterprisers who can purchase lands at a price based upon the high costs and lower yields of the older methods and cultivate them at the lower costs and with the larger yields of the newer methods.  This movement, therefore, toward the consolidation of smaller into larger farms is likely to continue in many communities for several decades.  This is likewise an advantage to the community in increasing the production with less labor.  But the net effect upon the social life of the countryside is more doubtful, and calls for careful consideration.

Sec. 3. #Self-sufficing versus commercial farming.  The typical American farming family once produced nearly everything it used, and used nearly everything it produced.  It was very nearly a self-sufficing economic unit, “a closed economy,” as it sometimes called.  Food, clothing, fuel, lumber, houses, furniture, tools, were on the farm carried through the various processes from the first gathering of the raw materials to the finished product.  They were then consumed by the farm household.  It is true that even in the first settlements there were some craftsmen, cobblers, millers, weavers, blacksmiths—­whose services and wares were got by trading some of the surplus products from the farms—­butter, cheese, eggs, wool, hides, furs, live stock, grain lumber.  A few rare commodities of foreign make found their way to the farm through peddlers and merchants; but altogether the goods produced outside the farm were a small fraction of the family’s consumption, and were exchanged for but little of the farm’s production.  Most farmers tried to produce for themselves, as far as possible, everything their families needed, when the soil and situation were poorly suited to the purposes.  True, there were early some exceptions to the general rule, where only one kind of crop was taken from the land.  Such was the forest product of masts, shingles, lumber, and turpentine, and the great southern staple, tobacco, and later, cotton.  The exceptions have been tending to become the rule in more and more communities.  Farmers have been specializing more and more in the kinds of products to which their farms are adapted in respect to soil, relation to market, and otherwise.  These products are taken to market and sold for money with which are bought the things needed for use on the farm.