Sec. 8. #Prospect of more intensive cultivation of land in America#.  As the aggregate need for food increases in America there must come a steady pressure upon our stock of land uses, resulting in decreasing returns to labor in agriculture, unless this movement can be counteracted by the spread of better methods in agriculture—­not European peasant methods, but new American methods consistent with high labor-incomes.  A good deal of our farm land is undoubtedly too intensively used now in view of present and prospective commodity prices and wages.  Maladjustment of land uses has resulted from mistaken judgment, from changing conditions as to prices, transportation, and markets, and from loss of soil fertility.  There are thus, on nearly every old farm, some fields that would better be in pasture and much hillside pasture that would better be woodland.  It is often declared extravagantly that our country could support easily the total population of China, or as great a population per square mile as that of Italy.  If it did so it would be only on the penalty of lowering wages toward, if not quite to, the level of the Chinese coolie or of the Italian peasant.  Great metropolitan dailies gravely present as an argument in favor of unrestricted immigration, the proposition that “if” the cheaper immigrants would but go upon our “waste” land (which they refuse to do), and raise food by European methods the problem of the rising cost of food in the cities would be solved.  This urban ideal of a frugal, low-paid agricultural peasantry can hardly be adopted in America as the national ideal.  Rather, it would seem, any movement toward more intensive agriculture that necessitates a lowering of the standard of living of the masses of the American people will, when it is recognized, be condemned and opposed.

Sec. 9. #The new agriculture#.  Agricultural method, the technic of farming, has been constantly progressing for two hundred years in Europe and in America, Were it not for this, the great growth of population on this combined area would have been quite impossible.  But the betterments since about 1890 in America have been especially great.  They are mostly the first large fruits of the scientific study made possible by the land-grant colleges and agricultural experiment stations fostered by state and national, legislation.  These many diverse improvements are grouped under the general title of “the new agriculture.”  Its chief features are:  new machinery and other labor-saving methods; better methods of cultivation of the soil; better selection of seed; introduction of new plants and trees from abroad to utilize low-grade lands; plant-breeding to develop new varieties of better quality, heavier bearing, or immune to disease; more efficient and economical ways of maintaining soil fertility; better methods of marketing; and better technical education of the individual farmer.  Each of these topics, and a number of other minor ones, would require a chapter in a complete treatise on agricultural economics.  Here this mere enumeration must be allowed to convey its own suggestion of far-reaching results for the whole political economy of the nation and of the world.