Part V: Public Policy Toward Private Industry

PART V PUBLIC POLICY TOWARD PRIVATE INDUSTRY CHAPTER 2G AGRICULTURAL AND RURAL POPULATION § 1. Sources of food and organic materials. § 2. Agriculture and farms in the United States. § 3. Rural and agricultural. § 4. Lack of a social agricultural policy in America. § 5. Period of decaying agricultural prosperity. § 6. Sociological effects of agricultural decay. § 7. Fewer, relatively, occupied in agriculture; use of machinery. § 8. Transfer of work from farm to factory. § 9. The rural exodus. § 10. The farmer's income in monetary terms. § 11. Compensations of the farmer's life. § 12. Ownership and tenancy. § 1. Sources of food and organic materials. The land area of the United States is about 1,900,000,000 acres, of which 879,000,000 acres were in farms in 1910, this being 46 per cent of the total area. A very small part of the remainder is used for residential and commercial purposes, the rest being barren mountains, deserts, swamps, and forests. Of the total in farms a little more than one half was improved, 478,000,000 acres altogether, a per capita average of 5.2 acres; and a little less than one half was unimproved,, 400,000,000 acres altogether, a per capita average of 4.3 acres. The improved land produced not merely food but many kinds of materials, such as cotton, wool, hides, and lumber, while much of the unimproved land was either in farm wood-lots or in rough range pasture. Of course, the kinds and amounts of produce per acre vary with the climate, particularly with sunshine and rainfall; possibly the proportion of the area of the United States that is true desert and infertile mountain-land is greater than that of any other equal area in the temperate zones. The actual productive capacity per acre of the lands 441 442 PUBLIC POLICY TOWARD PRIVATE INDUSTRY [PT. V of America cannot be expressed in a very helpful way as a general average per acre, but each area must be carefully studied in respect to its climate, rainfall, and possibility of irrigation and drainage. It is apparent that a very large number of economic problems must arise in connection with the land supply for food: such as problems of land-ownership, taxation, irrigation, drainage, forestry, and encouragement or limitation of population. We are just beginning to awake to the needs in this direction. The farmlands supply, besides food, a large part of the raw materials Fig. 1, Chapter 26. Natural Forest Regions of the U. S.