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little later. The estimate of total agricultural wealth production has been continued from previous years and is again presented as an indication of the financial results of the year's operations. All attempts in the past, by subtracting from this grand total of value such products as are used wholly or in part in the making of other farm products in order that the farmer's net wealth production might be ascertained, have given no indication of what that net production was and have only obscured the matter.

Taken at that point in production at which they acquire commercial value, the farm products of the year, estimated for every detail presented by the census, have a farm value of $6,794,000,000. This is $485,000,000 above the value of 1905, $635,000,000 above 1904, $877,000,000 above 1903, and $2,077,000,000 above the census for 1899.

The value of the farm products of 1906 was 8 per cent greater than that of 1905, 10 per cent over 1904, 15 per cent over 1903, and 44 per cent over 1899.

A simple series of index numbers is readily constructed, which shows the progressive movement of wealth production by the farmer. The value of the products of 1899 being taken at 100, the value for 1903 stands at 125, for 1904 at 131, for 1905 at 134, and for 1906 at 144.

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Corn remains by far the most valuable crop, and the figure that it may reach this year is $1,100,000,000 for 2,881,000,000 bushels perhaps a little under the value of the next largest

crop, that of 1905.

The cotton crop, fiber and seed combined, follows corn in order of value, although it is only three fifths of the value of the corn crop. No comments here must be regarded as indicating what the department's estimate of the cotton-fiber production is to be. Upon the basis of the general commercial expectation of a crop, it should be worth to the grower nearly $640,000,000. In Texas alone the cotton crop is greater than that of British India and nearly three times that of Egypt, and it is half as much again as the crop of the world, outside of the United States, India, and Egypt.

Hay is a crop that receives small popular attention, and yet it is the third one in value if cotton seed is included in the cotton crop, and this year it approaches $600,000,000 for a product that is short by perhaps 8,000,000 tons.

Wheat. The fourth crop in order of value is wheat, which this year may be worth over $450,000,000, a value that has been exceeded in several years; but in quantity this year's crop, with its 740,000,000 bushels, is only 8,000,000 bushels below the largest crop grown, that of 1901.

Oats. The crop of oats, on account of unfavorable weather, has fallen below the usual amount, but its value will be perhaps not far under $300,000,000, or about the same as for 1905, and not much under the highest value reached, in 1902.

Potatoes. With a probable crop of fully 300,000,000 bushels, potatoes reach next to their highest production, which was in 1904; but the total value, $150,000,000, rests upon a rather low average per bushel and has been exceeded in other years.

Barley. Seventh among the crops in order of value is barley, a cereal that has gained 21 per cent in production in seven years. The 145,000,000 bushels grown this year may be worth $65,000,000, both bushels and dollars being much more than for the highest preceding years, 1904 being the previous record year for yield and 1902 for value.

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Tobacco, which has shown weakness for several years on account of low prices, while not yet recovering its former place in pounds grown, has a crop this year of 629,000,000 pounds, with a value which is in close company with the three years of highest value, and it is expected will be worth $55,000,000, or perhaps $2,000,000 more.

Sugar. A remarkable development has been made within a few years by now the ninth crop, beet sugar. The production in 1906 is placed at 345,000 long tons, with a value supposed to be near $34,000,000. Seven years ago only 72,972 tons were produced, and their value was about $7,000,000.

The year was a rather bad one for cane sugar, but in spite of this the total production of beet and cane sugar slightly exceeded the highest previous figure, although in value of sugar the year

stands second. The value of all kinds of sugar, sirup, and molasses reaches a total of $75,000,000, second only to 1904, which was cane sugar's best year.

Flaxseed. The 27,000,000 bushels of flaxseed have been exceeded by three years, although the value, $25,000,000, reaches the highest point.

Rice, standing twelfth in order, is another crop with its highest value perhaps $18,000,000, although in production the 770,000,000 pounds of rough rice are second to 1904. Markets that have developed in Hawaii and Porto Rico have helped to keep the price high enough to account for the total value placed upon the crop.

Rye has become a minor crop, and has now fallen below rice in value. The crop of this year is below the larger crops of recent years, and is about 28,000,000 bushels, worth perhaps $17,000,000.

Hops. The fourteenth crop is hops, which reached its largest dimensions this year with 56,000,000 pounds, and as high a value as it has ever had, except in 1904, say $7,000,000.

3. The General Characteristics of American Agriculture 1

1

It is proposed in this paper to take a general view of the characteristics of American agriculture. Ever since the revolt of the British colonies nullified the royal prohibition of the settlement of the Ohio valley, the frontier line of our population has been moving steadily westward, passing over one, two, and even three degrees of longitude in a decade, until now it rests at the base of the Rocky mountains. The report of the Public Land Commission to Congress, just issued from the press, states that the amount of arable lands still remaining subject to occupation under the Homestead and Preemption acts is barely sufficient to meet the demand of settlers for a year or two to come. This would seem a fitting point from which to review the course of American agriculture through the last hundred 1 By Francis A. Walker. Reprinted from Tenth Census, III, xxxi-xxxiii. This first appeared in the Princeton Review, May, 1882.

years; to inquire what have been its methods and what it has accomplished.

The subject may be treated under the following titles:

1. As to the tenure of the soil.

2. As to character of the cultivators as a class.

3. As to the freedom and fullness of experiment upon the relations of crops to climate and to local soils.

4. As to what has been done biologically to promote our agriculture.

5. As to what has been done mechanically.

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6. As to what has been done chemically, under which title we shall have occasion to explain the westward movement of the field of cultivation of wheat and corn and the southwestward movement of the cotton culture.

First. The tenure of land in the United States is highly popular. Throughout the northern and western states this has always been so. The result has not been wholly due, as one is apt to think, to the existence of vast tracts of unoccupied land" at the West," whatever that phrase may at the time have meant, whether western New York in 1810, or Ohio in 1830, or Iowa in 1850, or Dacotah in 1880. An aristocratic holding of land in New England would have been quite as consistent with a great breadth of free lands across the Missouri as is such a holding of land in England consistent with the existence of boundless fertile tracts in Canada and Australia under the laws of the same empire.

The result in the United States has been due partly to the fact just noted, combined with the liberal policy of the government relative to the public domain; partly to excellent laws for the registration of titles and the transfer of real property in nearly every state of the Union; and partly to the genius of our people, their readiness to buy or to sell, to go east or to go west, as a profit may appear.

But while we have thus enjoyed a highly popular tenure of the soil, this has not been obtained by the force of laws compelling the subdivision of estates, as in France, under the law of "partible succession"; nor has it been carried so far as to create

a dull uniformity of petty holdings. If, as Professor Roscher remarks, “a mingling of large, medium, and small properties, in which those of medium size predominate, is the most wholesome of political and economical organizations," the United States may claim to have the most favorable tenure of the soil among all the nations of earth. We have millions of farms just large enough to profitably employ the labor of the proprietor and his growing sons; while we have, also, multitudes of considerable estates upon which labor and moneyed capital, live stock and improved machinery, are employed under skilled direction; and we have, lastly, those vast farms, the wonder of the world, in Illinois and California, where 1000 or 5000 acres are sown as one field of wheat or corn, or, as on the Dalrymple farms in Dacotah, where a brigade of six-horse mowers go, twenty abreast, to cut the grain that waves before the eye almost to the horizon. Whereas in France the number of estates is almost equal to the number of families engaged in agricultural pursuits, the number of separate farms with us is somewhat less than one half the number of persons actually engaged in agriculture, there being, on the average, perhaps 210 to 220 workers to each 100 farms.

At the South the institution of slavery, with the organization of labor and the social ideas carried along by slavery, generated and maintained a comparatively aristocratic tenure of the soil. The abolition of slavery, accomplished as it was by the violence of war, has not only created a new class desirous of acquiring land, but, by impoverishing the former masters, has brought no small proportion of the plantations into the market, with the result that farms have been rapidly multiplied in this section. Since 1870 the number of farms in thirteen of the late slave states for which I have the statistics has increased 65 per cent; and this movement towards the subdivision of the large plantations is likely, in the absence of capital, to carry on extensive operations, to continue until the tenure of the soil shall be relatively even more popular than in the North. Mr. Edward Atkinson, an

1 In all sections of the country the average size of a farm decreased from 1850 to 1880. Since that date there has been an increase in some sections, but

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