CHAPTER 24
POPULATION AND IMMIGRATION
§ 1. Nature of the population problem. § 2. Complexity of race problems. § 3. Economic aspects of the negro problem. § 4. Favorable economic aspects of early immigration. § 5. Employers' gains from immigration. § 6. Pressure of immigration upon native wage-workers. § 7. Abnormal labor conditions resulting from immigration. § 8. Popular theory of immigrant competition. § 9. Divergent views of effects on population. § 10. The displacement theory; its fundamental assumption. § 11. Magnitude of the inflow of immigrants. § 12. Earlier and recent effects of immigration upon wages. § 13. Laissez-faire policy of immigration. § 14. Social-protective policy of immigration. § 15. Population and militarism. § 16. Problem of maximum military power.
§ 1. #Nature of the population problem.# No one of the problems of labor thus far discussed is of so great importance in relation to popular welfare as is "the problem of population." By this is meant the problem of determining and maintaining the best relation between the population and the area and resources of the land. What is to be deemed "best" in this case depends, of course, on the various human sympathies and points of view of those pronouncing judgment. Very generally, until the nineteenth century, the only view that found expression was that of a small ruling class which favored all increase in population as magnifying the political power of the rulers and as increasing the wealth of the landed aristocracy. This view still is unconsciously taken by the members of a small but influential class, and is echoed without independent thought by many other persons. But more and more, in this and other labor problems, another more democratic standard of judgment has come to be taken, that of the abiding welfare of the masses of the people. This is the point of view that must be taken by the political economist in a free republic.
The problem of population presents two main aspects: one as to composition, and the other as to numbers of the people. Changes in either of these respects concern the welfare of the masses. Changes in the kinds of people, or in their relative numbers, may greatly affect the welfare of the people, in some cases touching special large classes, and in others affecting the whole mass of the people.
§ 2. #Complexity of race problems.# The questions of race composition that we shall here consider are those of the negro and of the immigrant.[1] Both of these questions are complex and go beyond the limits of mere economic considerations, touching the most vital political and social interests of the nation. Indeed they involve the very soul and existence of peoples, for who can doubt that ultimately racial survival and success are mainly to be determined by physical and spiritual capacity?
The negro in America is the gravest of our population problems. In large portions of our land it overshadows every other public question. Yet the negro is here because men of the seventeenth century ignored the complexity of the labor problem and thought only of its economic aspect. The landowners wished cheaper labor and, reckless of other consequences, they imported slaves from Africa to get it. They gained for themselves and a few generations of their descendants a measure of comparative ease, but at a frightful cost to our national life—a cost of which the Civil War now seems to have been merely a first installment on account rather than a final payment.
§ 3. #Economic aspects of the negro problem.# The negro as a wage earner is found very little outside of the least skilled branches of a limited range of occupations. Of these the principal ones, as is a matter of common knowledge, are farm work, domestic service (including janitor service in stores and factories and work in hotels), and crude manual outdoor labor. Repeated attempts to operate factories with a labor force of negroes have proved unsuccessful. In some of the better-paying occupations in which large numbers of negroes were found in the North soon after the Civil War, such as barbering, waiting on table in the best hotels, and skilled manual work, they have been largely displaced by European immigrants. Negroes are a disturbing and unwelcome influence in labor organizations, and even when nominally eligible to membership are in fact rarely accepted. They very frequently are employed as strike-breakers and this fosters race antagonism both immediately and permanently.
The negro problem is, from our present outlook, insoluble. The most laudable of present efforts, that for industrial training, represented by Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes, and the work of Booker T. Washington, leaves the dire fact of two races side by side and yet unassimilated socially, politically, and, in large measure, economically. Two other possibilities, race admixture and caste, are both so repellent to white American thought, that they cannot be looked upon as solutions. Segregation in a separate state, or separate states, is a thorogoing proposal, but is practically impossible. Finally there is the conceivable, but improbable, event of the decrease and extinction of the negroes in America, Their relative number has declined since 1800,[2] but their absolute number still continues to increase. It seems probable that if European immigration were to be stopped that a very large migration of negroes from the South to the North and the West would occur to take places hitherto filled by unskilled immigrant workers. In the year 1915, following the check to immigration as a result of the European war, a very marked movement of this kind set in. If this occurred on a much larger scale it might result in greatly reducing the negro population in some portions of the South, and as the "natural rate of increase" of the negroes in the North is a negative quantity, it might cause the total negro population of the country to begin absolutely decreasing.
§ 4. #Favorable economic aspects of earlier immigration.# Regarding the immigration problem we are not confined to futile expressions of regret as in the last case. For by the "immigration problem" is meant primarily and mainly the coming of immigrants, and we can by legislation limit or stop their coming, if we will. The question at issue is whether their coming really is an evil or, on the whole, a blessing to the country.
The historic American attitude toward immigration has been highly favorable to it. The early settlers on these coasts were led by various motives, some political, some religious, but far the largest part economic, the motive of bettering their worldly condition. Land was plentiful and all men of any capacity could easily become landowners. An inflow of laborers was favorable to the interests of all the influential elements of the population, especially to landowners and active business men. Increase of numbers, favoring division of labor and the economies of production in manufacturing, and reducing the dangers from Indians and from foreign enemies, seemed an unmixed blessing. Many of the newcomers soon became landowners and employers, and in turn favored a continuance of the movement. Thus was hastened the peopling of the wilderness. The interest of these classes harmonized to a certain point with the public interest; but likewise it was in some respects in conflict with the abiding welfare of the whole nation. It led to the fateful introduction of slavery from Africa, and it encouraged much defective immigration from Europe, the heritage of which survives in many defective and vicious strains of humanity, some of them notorious, such as the Jukes, the Kallikak family, and the Tribe of Ishmael.
§ 5. #Employers' gains from immigration.#. The immigration from Europe has furnished an ever-changing group of workers, moderating the rate of wages which employers otherwise would have had to pay. The continual influx of cheap labor aided in imparting values to all industrial opportunities. A large part of these gains have been in trade, in manufacturers, and in real estate as the cities have taken and retained an ever-growing share of the immigrants. Successive waves of immigration, composed of different races, have ever been ready to fill the ranks of the unskilled workers at wages somewhat lower than the current American rate.
The lower enterprisers' costs that resulted from immigration surely did not accrue to the advantage of the employers alone. Bearing in mind the fact that the employing-enterpriser is a middleman,[3] we may see that the lower costs must, in most cases, be passed on to the consumers in the form of lower prices of products. And often the consumer, as the employer of domestic service at lower rates than otherwise would be possible, gets this advantage directly. This increases the number of those whose self-interest, at least when narrowly judged, leads them to favor the policy of unrestricted immigration, Tho perhaps less general than it once was, this sentiment in favor of immigration is still potent. The continuous inflow of immigrants has in many industries come to be looked upon as an indispensable part of the labor supply. Conditions of trade, methods of manufacturing, prices, profits, and the capital value of the enterprises have become adjusted to the fact. Hence results one of those illusions cherished by men whenever they identify their own profits with the public welfare. Without immigration, it is said, "the supply of labor would not be equal to the demand." It would not at the wages prevailing. But supply and demand have reference to a certain price. At a higher wage the amount of labor offered and the amount demanded would come to an equality. This would temporarily curtail profits, and other prices would, after readjustment, be in a different ratio to wages.
§ 6. #Pressure of immigration upon native wage-workers.# There must always have been cases where the labor incomes of workers were somewhat depressed by the incoming of immigrants. Indeed, that must to some extent always be so when the natives continue to work alongside of the immigrant at just the same job. But before the Civil War living conditions were simple, wages comparatively high and (more important) pretty steadily rising, and the wage-earning class not yet a large share of the population. Moreover, this conflict of interest was minimized and often quite avoided by the native changing to another occupation. In the old days there was always the outlet of free land on the frontier, now closed. Always there has been a better opportunity for natives to move into higher positions of foremanship or as employers of immigrant labor.
As the wage-earners have become relatively more numerous, many of them have felt more keenly the pressure of competition from immigrant labor. Moreover, the immigration since 1890 has been increasingly from southern and southeastern Europe, from countries with much lower standards of living, and has been of enormous proportions. Here are some significant figures as to immigration since 1820.
———————————————————————————————
| | | Immigration,
| Immigration | Increase of | per cent of
Decade | in the period | population | population-
| | | increase
————————-|———————-|——————-|———————
1820-30 | 124,000 | 3,300,000 | 3.8
1830-40 | 528,000 | 4,200,000 | 12.3
1840-50 | 1,604,000 | 6,100,000 | 26.3
1850-60 | 2,648,000 | 8,200,000 | 32.3
1860-70 | 2,369,000 | 8,400,000 | 28.2
1870-80 | 2,812,000 | 10,400,000 | 27.0
1880-90 | 5,246,000 | 12,700,000 | 41.3
1890-1900 | 3,687,000 | 13,100,000 | 28.1
1900-1910 | 8,795,000 | 16,000,000 | 55.0
Total, 90 yrs. | 27,800,000 | 82,400,000 | 33.7
§ 7. #Abnormal labor conditions resulting from immigration.# The labor supply coming from countries of denser population and with low standards of living creates, in some occupations, an abnormally low level of wages and prices. Children cannot be born in American homes and raised on the American standard of living cheaply enough to maintain at such low wages a continuous supply of laborers. Many industries and branches of industry in America are thus parasitical A condition essentially pathological has come to be looked upon as normal. The commercial ideal imposes itself upon the minds of men in other circles.
Statistics show that the prevailing wages for unskilled manual workers in America have risen much less since the Civil War than have other wages.[4] Wages in the great lower stratum of the unskilled and slightly skilled workers are much lower in America relative to those of more skilled and professional workers than they are in Europe. It can hardly be doubted that the most important, tho not the sole, cause of this situation has been the unceasing inflow of immigrants going into these low-paid occupations. The "general economic situation" in America, but for immigration, would compel higher wages to be paid to the masses of the workers. If immigration were suddenly stopped in a period of normal or of increasing business, wages in these occupations would at once rise, and that, without the aid of organization, of strikes, or of arbitration. This would affect most those occupations which now present the most serious social problems, in mines, factories, and city sweatshops. In some small measure the war in the Balkan States, by recalling many men for service, had this influence in 1912; and the great war beginning in 1914, by stopping a large part of the usual immigration, gave a striking demonstration of this principle. In employing circles the rise of wages was sometimes referred to with an air of grievance as due to the "monopoly of labor," as if the economic situation here, enabling the wage-earners (millions of them immigrants), to get a higher competitive wage when immigration temporarily was diminished, constituted a monopoly.
§ 8. #Popular theory of immigrant competition.# The depressing effect of the ever-present and ever-renewing supply of immigrant labor upon wages appears most clearly at the time of wage contests, and often seems to be the most important aspect of the question. Laws against contract labor, passed to prevent this particular evil, have put no check to the great stream of those guided by friends to a "job." Organized labor thinks most of these immediate effects. Commonly labor's protest is expressed in terms of the untenable "lump of labor" theory of wages. "Every foreign workman who comes to America" is believed to take "the place of some American workman." The error in this too rigid conception of the influence exerted upon wages by new supplies of labor is evident in the light of the principles of wages. Yet it may be true that, both immediately and ultimately, the foreign workman depresses the incomes of those already here with whom he directly competes. On the other hand, those in occupations into which few immigrants enter may, as consumers of cheaper products, be immediately the gainers in real wages, by the very change that depresses the wages in the lower strata.[5] The manufacturing-employers advocate "protection" which enhances the price of their products, while usually favoring "free trade" in immigration to cheapen their costs. What more natural than that laborers should favor a policy of protection to labor, to keep foreigners from coming here to be their competitors.
§ 9. #Divergent views of effects on population.# The foregoing views of the effects of immigration upon wages, both of those favoring and those opposing it, are short-time views, relating to immediate rather than ultimate effects. If the immediate causes are continuously repeated throughout the lives of successive generations the results are for those mortal men as ultimate as anything that concerns them. In this case it would make no difference to the millions of workers, whose wages are depressed, if it could be shown that wages fifty or a hundred years from now would be no lower as a result of continued immigration than they otherwise would be; or to the employer that wages would then be no higher. But to the social philosopher and to the statesman, interested in the abiding general welfare, the ultimate economic effects are of the greatest importance.
The question is: What will be the far-reaching, long-time effects of immigration upon the general economic situation, as that determines the welfare of the mass of the people? We confine ourselves here to the economic effects, leaving aside as far as possible the racial, moral, religious, political, and general social aspects of the subject.
We are met at the outset by two divergent opinions as to the permanent results of immigration upon the growth of population. The one is that all immigrants coming to our shores are net additions, hastening by so much the growth in density of population; the other opinion, the displacement theory, is that immigration has the effect of checking the natural increase of the native stock so much that it does not materially change the total population, or actually causes it to be less than it would have been had no immigration occurred.
§ 10. #The displacement theory; its fundamental assumption.# The latter opinion which still has many upholders[6] was first advanced by a distinguished economist, Francis A. Walker, but his first statement of it referred only to the period between 1830 and 1860. The main argument in support of this opinion was that in the three decades from 1830 to 1860 during which a large immigration occurred, the decennial rates of increase of the population were almost the same as in the three decades from 1800 to 1830.[7] The conclusion drawn from these figures is that the immigrants were the cause of the decline of the average birthrate that occurred in the families of native stock. The validity of this conclusion is absolutely dependent on the assumption that no other forces were at work to produce this result. Must we believe that, but for immigration, the native birthrate would not have declined at all? This is incredible. The birthrate of the native stock had already begun to decline before 1820 as is shown by many family records, and by the fall of the decennial rate of increase from 35 and 36 in the decades ending 1800 and 1810, to 33.1 and 33.5 in the next two decades. This occurred despite the enormous western settlement then under way on the Louisiana Purchase. The decline of the birthrate began at that time to appear as a world-wide phenomenon, accompanying improved transportation (roads, steamboats, steam railways), the rapid growth of cities, and the general industrial revolution. The general birthrate has declined of recent years in Australia and New Zealand, where there has been little immigration, more rapidly than it has in the United States.[8]
§ 11. #Magnitude of the inflow of immigrants.#In view of these facts it seems necessary to modify the displacement theory greatly. To the extent that the coming of immigrants caused a net addition to the population, it doubtless hastened the growth of cities and the development of industrialism, and thus helped to reduce the birthrate in some classes. But this view admits the effect upon population which the displacement theory denies. Probably, in a good many cases the more rapid business advancement of the natives, because of the coming of the immigrants, led to the decline of birthrate that is a consequence of economic success.[9] But a large part of this change would have inevitably occurred even if there had been no immigration after 1820. Between 1820 and 1910 the population increased 82,400,000, and the total number of immigrants was 27,800,000, or 33.7 per cent of the total increase. In an urban environment the birthrate among immigrants always has been very much higher than that of native Americans. This fact alone might well be taken as sufficient to offset whatever depressing effects the coming of the immigrants may have had upon the native birthrate, leaving the immigration nearly a net addition to population. It does not seem possible to believe that if there had been no immigration, our native population, rapidly advancing in average wealth, wages, and general education, would have continued with an unchecked birthrate, and would have filled all the places taken by immigrants. And no believer in the displacement theory has ever ventured to claim, as the argument requires, that if immigration were now stopped, the birthrate would again return to the old standard of 1820, or would cease to decrease somewhat. Especially of late, since the rate of increase of the native population has become much less, is the effect of continuing immigration apparent. In the decade of 1900-1910 the total population increased 16,000,000, while nearly 9,000,000 immigrants arrived. Of the remaining increase, 3,000,000 consisted of children born of foreign parents. That leaves three or at the most four million (4,000,000) increase attributable to the native stock, white and negro combined.
§ 12. #Earlier and recent effects of immigration upon wages.# Let us now correlate the principle of decreasing returns and the facts as to the exploitation of our natural resources[10] with the growth of our population, on the assumption that immigration has been a net contribution to our numbers. While the vast frontier was open to settlement, the growth of population could not fail to be looked upon as a blessing, even tho somewhat mixed with political evils, immorality, and pauperism. Beginning in colonial times, the policy of "the open door" to immigrants came thus to be deemed the traditional, patriotic American policy. Yet there is grave reason to believe that the rate of growth in the nineteenth century was wastefully rapid and that a slower and sounder growth might have been better.[11] However, this rapid growth was largely extensive, spreading over wider areas, and was consistent with a pretty steady rise of real wages in America until about 1895,[12] the level continuing higher than that of Europe despite the contemporaneous rise of wages there. Much of this general rise is undoubtedly attributable to the adoption of better tools, machinery, and industrial processes, the more so as inventions and new methods have rapidly become free goods.[13] The beneficial improvements long cooperated with the rapid exploitation of rich resources to raise real wages, and then undoubtedly continued to offset for a time the unfavorable effects as the richer resources began to show signs of exhaustion. Since the end of the last century, however, the net trend upward seems to be checked, and "the rising cost of living" (real cost) has come to be a serious actuality for larger sections of the population.[14]
Yet so long as wages are enough higher in America to pay the passage of the low-paid workers of the industrially backward nations, they will continue to come. The ease and cheapness of migration in these days of steamships, the encouragement of immigration by the agencies and advertisements of the steamship lines, and the increasing readiness of the peasantry to migrate, have become well known through recent discussions. Unless immigration is limited, it must continue to depress the wages of American workingmen, through both its immediate and its ultimate effects.
§ 13. #Laissez-faire policy of immigration.# There are those who take a fatalistic, or a laissez-faire, view of the subject, and declare that the problem will solve itself as the level of American wages comes to be nearly the same as that of the countries of Europe from which our immigration is coming. True enough, if this can be called a "solution." There are many who cherish the commercial ideal according to which cheap labor is absolutely desirable and needful to produce cheaper products. This ideal has spread to wider circles. Here, for example, are the words of a man who combines wide knowledge of the facts of immigration with keen sympathy for the working classes:[15] "The past industrial development of America points unerringly to Europe as the source whence our unskilled labor supply is to be drawn . . . America is in the race for the markets of the world; its call for workers will not cease." Yet a little further on he must say: "All wage-earners in America agree that it is not as easy to make a living to-day as it was twenty years ago, and the dollar does not go so far now as it did then. The conflict for subsistence on the part of the wage-earner is growing more stern as we increase in numbers and industrial life becomes more complicated, and the fact must be faced that the vast army of workers must live more economically if peace and well-being are to prevail."
§ 14. #Social-protective policy of immigration.# A different kind of solution is offered by those who favor the strict limitation, if not the complete prohibition, of immigration.
The foregoing study indicates that the time has come, if it is not far past, when the traditional policy of fostering immigration is opposed to the welfare of the masses of the people. This belief can be based solely on grounds of numbers, the relation of population to resources, quite apart from a preference for particular races or the familiar arguments regarding social and political evils and lack of assimilation, however valid they may be. The limitation of immigration would immediately improve working-class conditions where they are worst in America,[16] and would check and probably reverse the tendency to diminishing returns already manifest in many directions. This opinion does not necessitate an absolute prohibition of immigration; it is consistent with the continuance of immigration of a strictly selected character, and in numbers so small that all European immigrants now here could be rapidly and completely assimilated, economically and racially. With a slow national increase of population and with the continued progress of science and the arts, it should be possible for real wages to continue indefinitely rising in America. The selection of immigrants to be admitted should be a part of a national policy of eugenics,[17] which aims to improve the racial quality of the nation by checking the multiplication of the strains defective in respect to mentality, nervous organization, and physical health, and by encouraging the more capable elements of the population to contribute in due proportion to the maintenance of a healthy, moral, and efficient population. In such a view, a eugenic opportunity is presented in the selection and admission of immigrants that are distinctly above (not merely equal to) the average of our general population.
§ 15. #Population and militarism#. In view of the recrudescence of the spirit of armed national aggression evident of late, and especially in the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, the military aspect of the population question deserves serious consideration. The growth of savage and barbarian tribes in numbers, so that their customary standards of living were threatened, frequently has led to the invasion and conquest of their richer neighbors.[18] To-day nations on a higher plane of living are probably repeating history. The nation with an expanding population is tempted to seek an outlet for its numbers and for its products by entering upon a policy of commercial expansion, which in turn has to be supported by stronger military and naval establishments. It is led by primitive impulses that to it carry their own moral justification, to possess the territory of its neighbors. The immediate occasion is probably some matter of internal politics, such as growing discontent and democratic sentiment among the people. Nations with slowly growing populations, and still possessed of ample territories to maintain their accustomed standards of life, naturally favor the status quo, and are pacifist or nonmilitarist. If they arm it is for their own safety. In this view, militarism is seen to consist not in having drilled soldiers and stores of munitions, but in the national state of mind that would use these for aggression, not merely for defense. When, therefore, a powerful nation has reached a certain stage in the relation of its population to resources, limitation of population not limitation of armaments is the real pacifism; and increase of population, not increased military training or a larger navy, is the real militarism.
§ 16. #Problem of maximum military power.# It is a grave question, however, whether a nation with a comparatively sparse population, high wages, and great wealth can safely limit that population in the presence of a capable, ambitious, and efficient rival that covets such opportunities. On the one hand, a population may be so sparse that it has not soldiers enough to defend its territory against a numerous enemy; on the other hand, it may be so dense, and consequently average incomes be so low, that it cannot properly train, arm, and support its population of military age. The recent developments in the art of warfare call for great use of the mechanical industries, for great power to endure taxation, and for great financial resources, conditions found only where the average of national income is high. The point of maximum military power must be far short of the maximum possible population. It would seem that a nation of 100,000,000 inhabitants favorably situated to resist aggression, well supplied with the natural materials for munitions, and well equipped to produce them, might safely limit its numbers so as to ensure a high level of popular income. This safety would be greatly increased by permanent alliance with other peoples likewise limiting their numbers and, therefore, interested in maintaining the peace of the world. In this way it would be possible for them all to maintain a standard of popular well-being even higher than is fully consistent with the maximum military power, even in the presence of prolific and aggressive rival nations.
[Footnote 1: Even more important than these is the relative decrease of the successful strains of the population, briefly treated in Vol. I, ch. 33. This is the problem of eugenics, the choice and biologic breeding of capable men to be the citizens of the nation, and broadly understood, it includes both the negro and the immigrant problems.]
[Footnote 2: See Vol. I, p. 430, figure 58, showing the fall in the decennial rate of increase of negroes compared with whites; and see comment in accompanying note.]
[Footnote 3: See above, ch. 20, sec. 11, and references in note.]
[Footnote 4: See below, sec. 12.]
[Footnote 5: See Vol. I, p. 221, on non-competing classes.]
[Footnote 6: The latest and best statement is that of H.P. Fairchild, "Immigration," pp. 215-225, citing various opinions, and accepting the view of Walker. But he says (p. 216): "It must be admitted that this is not a proposition which can be demonstrated in an absolutely mathematical way, which will leave no further ground for argument."]
[Footnote 7: See Vol. I, p. 429, for figures of population and of decennial rates of increase.]
[Footnote 8: The effect of the growth of cities is discussed in the
"American Journal of Sociology," Vol. 18, p. 342, in an article on
"Walker's Theory of Immigration," by E.A. Goldenweiser.]
[Footnote 9: See Vol. I, p. 420.]
[Footnote 10: See Vol. I, chs. 34 and 35.]
[Footnote 11: E.g., see above ch. 14, sec. 11 on the prodigal land policy.]
[Footnote 12: See Vol. I, p. 436 ff.]
[Footnote 13: See Vol. I, ch. 36, on machinery and wages.]
[Footnote 14: For analysis of the available statistics bearing on the subject, with conclusions that real wages are no longer rising, see H.P. Fairchild, in "American Economic Review" (March, 1916), "The standard of living-up or down?"]
[Footnote 15: Peter Roberts, in "The New Immigration," 1912, preface, p. viii, and p. 47.]
[Footnote 16: See above, sec. 7; also ch. 21, sec. 9.]
[Footnote 17: See above, sec. 2, note; also Vol. I, p. 422.]
[Footnote 18: See Vol. I, p, 412, on war and the pressure of population.]
PART VI
PROBLEMS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION
CHAPTER 25
AGRICULTURAL AND RURAL POPULATION
§ 1. Agriculture and farms in the United States. § 2. Rural and agricultural. § 3. Lack of a social agricultural policy in America. § 4. Period of decaying agricultural prosperity. § 5. Sociological effects of agricultural decay. § 6. Fewer, relatively, occupied in agriculture; use of machinery. § 7. Transfer of work from farm to factory. § 8. The rural exodus. § 9. The farmer's income in monetary terms. § 10. Compensations of the farmer's life. § 11. Ownership and tenancy.
§ 1. #Agriculture and farms in the United States#. There were nearly 12,400,000 persons in the United States gainfully occupied in agriculture in 1910, this being 32.5 per cent of all in occupations. These, together with other family members not reported as engaged in gainful occupations, constitute the agricultural population, and comprize more than one third of the total population of the country. "Agriculture" is here used in a broad sense, including floriculture, animal husbandry (poultry, bee culture, stock raising), regular fishing and oystering, forestry and lumbering. Agriculture thus produces not only the food but (excepting minerals, including coal, stone, natural gas, and oil) the raw or partly finished materials for all the manufacturing and mechanical industries.
With the exception of areas devoted to forestry on a large scale and to fishing, the industry of agriculture is pursued on the 6,400,000 farms, covering 46 per cent of the total land area of the country. Of the land in farms, a little over half is classified as improved. The estimated value of farm property, including buildings, implements, machinery, and live stock, was, in 1910, about $41,000,000,000, somewhere near one fourth of the estimated wealth of the country at that date.[1]
§ 2. #Rural and agricultural.# The adjectives rural and agricultural are often used loosely as synonyms. Agricultural refers primarily to the occupation of cultivating the soil, and is properly contrasted with other occupations, as mechanical and professional; whereas rural refers to place of residence outside of incorporated places of a specified minimum population (of late, 2500), and is properly contrasted with urban, applied to those living in larger population groupings. In 1910 the rural population comprised 53.7 per cent of the total population. It is true that the two groups of the agricultural and the rural populations are largely composed of the same persons, but to a considerable extent they are not. Many farm houses, together with part or all of the farm lands, lie inside urban boundaries, and, besides, some persons engaged in agriculture reside in urban places. On the other hand, any one acquainted in the least with a rural district (in the statistical sense) can at once think of many persons living there that are not engaged in agriculture; they may be merchants, warehousemen, railway employees, physicians, handicraftsmen, teachers, artists, retired business men, and others. The percentages given in this and in the preceding section indicate that about two fifths of the rural families are not engaged in agriculture.
It is often important to make this distinction, tho it is difficult to do; for some of the much-discussed rural questions are of a broad social nature, are matters of rural sociology, relating pretty generally to the rural population; while other questions of "rural economics" are more strictly matters of agricultural economics and relate to the farm as a unit of industry, or to agriculture as an occupation.
§ 3. #Lack of a social agricultural policy in America.# It is a common remark that the farmer lives an independent life. This develops in him a self-reliant spirit. He readily gives and takes simple neighborly help in informal ways, but he does not readily turn to government for aid. While every influential urban group, organized or unorganized—manufacturers, merchants, wage-earners—has sought and obtained special protective social legislation, the farmer has, from choice or necessity, usually had to work out his economic problems unaided. The exceptions are few and of small importance. For example, the prodigal land-policy of the state and national governments encouraging the settlement of the frontiers was not a farmers' policy. It was originally inspired by the larger political purpose of extending the bounds of the nation; later it was advocated and fostered by a land-speculating element, linked with bad politics, in the frontier states, and not by farmers as such. It in time greatly injured the farmers of the eastern states. The "Granger legislation," to regulate railroad rates, was so called by the East in a spirit of derision because it began in the distinctively agricultural states of the Northwest; but it had neither the aim, nor the result, of obtaining especially for farmers any rates that were not open to every one on the same terms. The tariff rates on American agricultural products, placed in the acts as a matter of form, have, with minute exceptions, been ineffective to favor farmers, as the shipments were all outward and none inward, while heavy and effective rates were placed on most things that the farmers had to buy.[2]
In part the explanation of the lack of legislation favoring farmers is to be found in their small part and influence, as a class, in political affairs, outside of minor executive offices in township and county governments. In the state legislatures farmers are few relative to their numbers in the community, and still fewer in either House in Washington. Among the real exceptions to the otherwise fair record of the farming class in this respect is the tax on oleomargarine and the special favor accorded to farmers' associations in the Clayton Act. It might be cynically said that the farmer has not been "sharp" enough to get his share of the "good" things" that the business classes were passing around in protective legislation. But farmers have, as has every economic group, interests which may legitimately be the subject of social legislation; whereas they have limited their attention to their private affairs at home and have been prone to vote patiently and proudly the "straight ticket" to elect business men and lawyers to office.
§ 4. #Period of decaying agricultural prosperity#. Despite the facts just stated, every campaign orator admits that there is no other occupational class of the nation of greater importance to the nation than the farmers, or more deserving of prosperity. Every other part of the industrial organization of a nation is interrelated with its agriculture. Great changes, in respect to growth of population, immigration, exhaustion of natural resources, mechanical inventions, scientific discovery, and many things more, have been occurring, which have altered and, in some communities, have destroyed the very foundations of agricultural enterprise in America since the close of the Civil War in 1865. But the farmers have been left to struggle individually with their individual difficulties, tho the outcome was of the gravest portent to the whole social economy. Such was the case in the period of agricultural depression from 1873 to about 1896.[3] Multitudes of ancestral homesteads were then left behind by the last farmer-descendant of the old line. No longer able to make a living on the soil, he took up an urban occupation.
§ 5. #Sociological effects of agricultural decay#. Such changes caused a relative decline in the birthrate of the old American stock. The places of many of these long-settled families remained unfilled as thousands of abandoned farm houses testified. The places of others were taken by a tenantry, white or black, lacking the thrift of ownership; the lands of others passed to new owners of alien races. The populations of many rural neighborhoods thus became heterogeneous, with results calamitous to the social life. Once prosperous schools declined, once thronging country churches were deserted, and much of the old neighborhood democracy disappeared. When, about the year 1900, prosperity began slowly to return to the American countrysides in the form of rising prices of farm produce, it was in large part too late to remedy the evil, except as it may be done by generations of effort under more favoring conditions. There are merely suggested here some of the complex sociological effects of past economic changes in American agriculture. It is certain that in the future also the economic changes in this field will be related closely to social and political changes of a fundamental character.
§ 6. #Fewer, relatively, occupied in agriculture; use of machinery.# Probably ever since the first census in 1790, the relative number of agriculturists in this country has been decreasing. Beginning in 1880, the numbers of those occupied in agriculture for gain have been reported at the census dates in a form that makes them fairly comparable.[4]
The explanation of this decrease in the proportion of the population that is engaged in agriculture is twofold; the first is the real increase in the productive output per person in agricultural industry. In larger part this is due to the increasing use of machinery in place of simple hand tools, and the substitution of horse-, hydraulic-, windmill-, steam-, and gasoline-power for human labor. This change has been made readily in the regions of level fields, but of late has been made possible to a greater extent in hilly country, by rearranging and combining the old irregular fields into regular fairly level rectangular fields easily tillable, while turning the rougher lands and hillsides into wood lots and pastures.[5] One man, thus, driving three or four or more horses, can do the work formerly done by two or more men and do it just as well. The farmers' incomes in different parts of the country vary pretty nearly with the amount of horse-power used per man. Economies equally great are made in the work done in the barnyards and barns. In most parts of the country only a beginning has been made in these ways, and in future the census will continue to reflect the progress in these directions.
§ 7. #Transfer of work from farm to factory#. The other part of the explanation of the decrease in the proportion of the population that is engaged in agriculture is that many operations are, step by step, being transferred from the farm to the factory. "Agriculture," we have observed, is a great complex of industries, in which many different products are taken from the first simplest extractive stage, and then put through successive processes to make them more nearly fitted for their final uses. Not so long ago grain cut in the field was threshed, winnowed, shelled, made into flour, and baked on the farm, as it still is in many places. Logs were cut into boards, planed, and made into houses or furniture by the farmer. The old-time farmer made by hand a large number of his farm implements—rakes, ax handles, pumps, carts, and even wagons. Until a generation ago all butter, cheese, and other dairy products were made on the farm. Now these things are being done in steadily increasing proportion by workers classified as in the manufacturing industries, and agriculture contains fewer separate industries and processes. Of course there is economy of labor in nearly all of these changes, but the number occupied in agriculture is greatly reduced. Many farmers and more farmers' sons are moving from agriculture into occupations of manufacturing, trade, transportation, and the professions, and are becoming more narrow specialists.
§ 8. #The rural exodus#. The percentage of persons in the rural population changes at about the same rate as does that of the persons occupied in agriculture. In 1890 it was 64, in 1900 it was 60, and in 1910 it was 54 per cent. The percentage of the population in cities of 8000 or more has steadily increased. This phenomenon has been marked in all of the countries that have been developing along industrial lines. It has been variously described as "the rural exodus," "the abandonment-of-the-farm-movement," and "the city-ward drift."[6] It is only in part explained by the change from agriculture to other occupations; perhaps even in greater part it is due to the decline and disappearance in many rural places of small manufacturing and mercantile businesses before the competition of large business in the cities. In much of the long-settled area of the country every hillside stream once turned a little mill to saw timber, grind corn, forge iron, or weave cloth. Most of these mills are now deserted. In countless villages the old blacksmith shop, once a center of business, is abandoned. Here and there a patriarchal smith still serves a dwindling group of customers and speaks with mingled pride and pathos of his sons, now in the automobile business in the city.
The movement away from the countryside has been but little counteracted as yet, but may be more in future, by the growing enjoyment of rural life, by the back-to-the-land movement, by interurban railways, by improved roads, and by automobiles.
§ 9. #The farmer's income in monetary terms#. Census figures and some additional investigations have led to the estimate of the average real income of the farmers of the United States in 1909, expressed in monetary terms, as $724. The estimated value of all products, whether sold or used by the farmer, plus the value of his house rent and fuel consumed by family, was $1236, from which expenditures of $512 are deducted for outside labor, and for materials used for operating and maintaining the farm. Of the $724 the sum of $402 is estimated to be the labor-income of the family and $322 is estimated to be the wealth-income (at 5 per cent of the capitalization of the farm). This was in a period of rising values in farm lands, averaging about $323 per farm annually, and this to most farmers was equivalent to so much monetary savings. The main items of net income, therefore, are as follows:
Rent $125
Food from the farm 261
Fuel 35
Cash 303
Total $724
Increase in value of farm 323
Total estimated monetary income $1047
Of the total, $422 is a labor-income, and $645 is a wealth income.[7]
It would be difficult, even if the available statistics were much more exact than they are, to compare exactly the farmer's income with those of urban classes. Averages of such large numbers and over such a wide area have a limited significance in the specific case; and living conditions and the purchasing power of money are so different in country and city and in different parts of the country.[8]
§ 10. #Compensations of the farmer's life#. In bare monetary terms the average farmer's family gets a labor-income less than that of the ordinary wage-earner in a factory, and it is only by the aid of the wealth-income that it appears to fare as well or better. Even the few largest incomes made in farming are small in comparison with many of those made in commerce, transportation, and manufacturing. The great mass of farmers of the nation are hard-laboring men, poor in the eyes of the city dwellers.[9]
But this much is certain: the farmer's income in monetary terms has on the average much larger power to purchase the main goods of life (material and psychic goods) than it would have in town. Equally good house usance would cost more in nearly all towns, and much more in larger cities. Retail prices of the same food and fuel even in small towns would be much greater. The necessary outlay for clothes to maintain the class standard is much less for farmers than for city dwellers. Moreover, in the use of horses and carriages, and now of automobiles, and in the free control of his own time—in many elements of psychic income—the farmer is on a parity with men in other occupations of double or quadruple his income expressed in monetary terms.
Tho the farmer's working day in the busiest season of summer is very long compared with that of factory or office workers, his working day at other seasons is usually much shorter than the average urban worker's day. The farmer's life is nearly always free from the excessive pressure, haste, and competition of city life, and the value, to many a man, of the more natural and wholesome conditions of outdoor life and outdoor work are hardly to be measured in terms of even the most untainted dollars.
§ 11. #Ownership and tenancy.# Since 1880, when the first figures on farm tenures were collected, the proportion of farms operated by owners has steadily decreased.
Percentage of farms operated by
Owners Cash tenants Share tenants
1880 ………… 74.5 8.0 17.5 1890 ………… 71.6 10.0 18.4 1900 ………… 64.7 13.1 22.2 1910 ………… 63.0 13.0 24.0
These statistics arouse fears that the class of independent farmers operating their own farms is gradually giving way to a tenantry in America. But in some respects the figures are misleading unless carefully interpreted. The increasing proportion of tenants is due not so much to owners falling into the class of tenants as to the hired laborers rising into the class of tenants. The number of male operating owners compared with all male workers (not merely with all farms) has remained almost constant at about 42 per cent; while the per cent of hired workers has decreased from 43.3 (in 1880) to 41.4 (in 1890) and to 34.6 (in 1900). Most hired men on farms are farmers' sons; the city boy does not adapt himself readily to farm work. Most hired men of native stock become tenants, and finally owners. Only 11 per cent of the hired workers in agriculture (in 1900) were over 35 years of age.
The landlord of a farm let to a tenant, especially to a share tenant, is still to a large extent the general manager, controlling in a large measure through the renting contract and by his oversight, the operations of the farm. Older men find that letting the farm to a share tenant is easier for them and gives better results than continuing to operate the farm with hired labor. And it evidently gives a man a somewhat higher status to become a tenant than to continue to be a hired laborer. In the South this movement has taken on large proportions in the breaking up of large plantations once operated by the owner with hired labor, and now let in smaller lots to operating tenants. Yet such a change appears, statistically, as a decrease in the proportion of farms operated by owners. Despite these somewhat reassuring facts, the problem of maintaining and increasing operating ownership of farms in America is one deserving of the most earnest thought and efforts. The best form of farm tenure is not necessarily that giving the best immediate economic results. Politically in a democratic nation, and sociologically in its effects upon the size of families and the raising of healthy children, the preservation of an independent American yeomanry is of fundamental importance to the nation.
The problem is as difficult as it is important, and becomes more difficult with the rise in the acreage value of lands and with the economical size of farms, both calling for a larger investment to become an owner. Changes in the system of taxation should be made with reference to this object; the system of agricultural credit should be developed and administered to assist; special efforts in agricultural education should be made and active administrative efforts should be directed, toward this important end.
[Footnote 1: See above, ch. 1, secs. 7 and 8.]
[Footnote 2: See ch. 14, sec. 5.]
[Footnote 3: See Vol. I, p. 437.]
[Footnote 4: It must be observed in studying these figures, that farmers' wives and children, working at home, are not reported as gainfully occupied. But a widow or a spinster owner, if herself acting as the enterpriser, is reported as "occupied" in agriculture. The increasing number of such cases in the past generation in part explains the growing number and percentage of females in agriculture.
Number occupied in agriculture Per cent of all persons occupied
Males Females Both sexes Males Females Both sexes
1880… 7,068,658 594,385 7,663,043 47.9 22.5 44.1
1890… 7,787,539 678,824 8,466,363 41.4 17.3 37.2
1900… 9,272,315 977,336 10,249,651 39.0 18.4 35.3
1910…10,582,039 1,806,584 12,388,623 35.2 22.4 32.5
]
[Footnote 5: See further, ch. 26, secs. 1 and 2 on the size of farms as an economic factor.]
[Footnote 6: See above, sec. 2, on the distinction between rural and agricultural. In part the change here noted results from increases in the population of towns and incorporated places from a little below 2500 to something about 2500. For example, if there were 2499 persons in a town in 1900 they would all be classified as rural; if in 1910 there were 2500 or more they would all be classified as urban.]
[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
§ 1. Size of farms, and total farming area. § 2. Influences acting upon the size of farms. § 3. Self-sufficing versus commercial farming. § 4. Farming viewed as a capitalistic enterprise. § 5. Diversified versus specialized farming. § 6. Conditions favoring diversified farming. § 7. Intensive farming in Europe and America. § 8. Prospect of more intensive cultivation of land in America. § 9. The new agriculture. § 10. Difficulty of coöperation among farmers. § 11. Rapid growth of farmers' selling coöperation. § 12. Some economic features of farmers' selling coöperation. § 13. Coöperation in buying. § 14. Need of agricultural credit. § 15. Recent provisions for farm loans.
§ 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.
§ 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 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.
§ 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.
§ 4. #Farming viewed as a capitalistic enterprise#. Thus the farm comes to be looked upon more and more, not just as a home, but much as if it were a commercial enterprise or a factory, by which products are made for sale. This change, to be sure, is far from complete, as the figures for the average farmer's income show that a large share of the family living still comes from the farm. It has gone on much further in some districts than in others, as is indicated in the types of farming discussed below. But just to the extent that the farmer grows crops to sell, his outlook on his work undergoes a change. He is less exclusively a farmer, concerned with the technical processes of farming; he must be more largely a business man. Like a manufacturing enterpriser, he buys the factors of production, combines them into new products, and sells them again. He becomes interested in market conditions and prices. He grows more commercially-minded. He views the farm no longer as a fixed area, but one that may be enlarged by purchase or by rental, and that may be reduced by selling or letting the less needed parts. One-fifth of farm owners now rent additional land. In commercial farming the land is not contrasted with capital as something apart, consisting of the value of the equipment and stock; but the whole complex of land and other goods is thought of as a capital-investment. The greater ease of transferring landed-property in America and the greater mobility of our population have always made it more natural here than in Europe to look upon land as a capital investment. This view is now becoming more general as a result of the commercializing of farming enterprise.
This change has been favored by other influences. Particularly has the use of machinery and of other equipment, calling for a larger investment per man and per acre, been making agriculture, in its form of enterprise, more and more like manufacturing and commercial undertakings.
§ 5. #Diversified versus specialized farming#. To be self-sufficing a farming family must carry on general farming, that is, must produce a diversity of products. As farming becomes more commercialized it necessarily becomes somewhat more specialized, and produces a smaller variety of products. In some parts of the country and on particular farms this specialization is extreme: in California, citrus fruits, or prunes, or beans, may be the only crop raised; wheat in Kansas and the Dakotas, and dairy products in thousands of farms surrounding the great cities, are the main, tho not the exclusive products. Many farmers in these districts have no gardens or orchards, keep no cow, and buy much or all of the grain for their horses, as well as milk, butter, vegetables and fruits for their own use. Poultry and eggs are shipped in trainloads two thousand miles from the Middle West to California to be consumed by orange growers. Many farmers in the East no longer keep sheep, pigs, or beef cattle, and they buy out of the butcher's wagon all the meat except fowls used by their families. This partly explains the decrease of live stock in the whole country in recent years and the increase in the price of meat.
§ 6. #Conditions favoring diversified farming#. There are, however, limits to the net advantage of specialization in crops, and competent authorities on agriculture question whether in many cases that limit has not been readied and passed. Most farms have a variety of soils and of conditions—hilltops, slopes, bottom lands—which are suitable for different purposes. A rotation of crops is necessary to get good yields. Live stock must be kept to maintain the fertility of the land, which deteriorates fast if hay and grain are continually sold. Some live stock can be kept on every farm very cheaply with the food that would go to waste otherwise. The specialization in stock raising in the prairie states ceased to be profitable when lands became more valuable. Specialization in wheat production in the states just west of the Mississippi is possible only so long as wheat will grow on the virgin soil without costly fertilizers. The cotton farmers of the South, especially the negro farmers, have been forced by debt and thriftlessness into a one-crop policy that is now seen to be wasteful in the long run. A variety of production is necessary to employ labor somewhat regularly on a farm throughout the year. These and other conditions will make most farming always an industry of comparatively diversified products. Only 1 per cent of the farms get as much as 40 per cent of their receipts from fruit; 2 per cent get that much from tobacco; 3 per cent from vegetables; 6 per cent from dairy products; and 19 per cent from cotton. The remaining 60 per cent of receipts were in most cases from various sources, and these figures did not include the value of produce consumed by the farmer's family.
§ 7. #Intensive farming in Europe and America#. No other farm problem interests the city man so much as that of increasing the production of the land. To most city men farming hardly seems to be an occupation giving livelihood and life to the farmer; it seems rather to exist for the sole purpose of feeding men living in cities. The city man, therefore, measures the success of farming not by the farmer's income, by the level of countryside prosperity, but by the number of bushels per acre raised to ship to town. Every city newspaper and magazine contains articles pointing to the fact that larger crops per acre are raised in Europe than in America, and broadly suggesting that the American farmer could do as well, if only he would. Foreign travelers comment in like vein on the wasteful use of land in America as compared with farming methods in Europe.
Land is used most extensively, with respect to labor, when it is in forests; somewhat less so when in pasture as care must be given to the live stock; and still less when used for hay, grain, and other crops. But the use of machinery in large fields is far more extensive than the patient work of peasants with their hand tools. The more labor or the more equipment (or both together) that is put upon an acre, the larger the product, but the larger the cost per unit. It is a familiar economic principle.[1] It would bankrupt any farmer, excepting the millionaire amateur, to farm in America by European methods. American farmers, at least many of them, could raise as many bushels per acre and keep their farms as thoroly cultivated as do the European peasants, if wages were as low here as are the peasants' incomes.
§ 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.
§ 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.
Indeed, so much has been written in a Barnumesque way of the wonders of the new agriculture, that its actual results and further possibilities are in many minds absurdly exaggerated. It has not as yet been potent enough to prevent diminishing returns in respect to the great staple foods and raw materials obtained by agriculture. It apparently has barely kept pace with the needs of the growing population of Christendom. It has enabled a larger population to exist in about the same, if not in a worse condition, on the same area, while progress in cheapness of goods has come almost entirely from the side of the chemical and the mechanical industries. It does not give the promise of an indefinite amelioration of the lot of an indefinitely multiplying population. But to a population slowly increasing, a new and ever newer agriculture, utilizing constantly the achievements of the natural sciences and the mechanic arts, ensures the possibility of a steady betterment of the popular welfare in city and in open country alike.
§ 10. #Difficulty of coöperation among farmers#. Rural communities are proverbially conservative; the American farmer is proverbially an individualist. No wonder, then, that the new ideas and plans of coöperation in business matters have made headway in agriculture slowly and with difficulty. The need of mutual aid among American farmers is especially great, for, as has often been, said, isolation is the problem of the farm as congestion is that of the city. On the frontier a coöperative spirit manifested itself frequently in mutual helpfulness, in house raising bees, husking bees, threshing bees, and other similar gatherings.
But this spirit seems to have almost disappeared in the older communities, the more rapidly doubtless in the period of decaying agricultural prosperity.[2] To-day, for example, it is impossible on a certain Pennsylvania road for one more progressive farmer to get his neighbors to coöperate in so simple a matter as hauling their milk cans to the creamery, and so every day in the year ten horses are hitched to ten delivery wagons carrying two or three milk cans apiece, and driven by ten drivers along the same road to and from the railroad station. One driver and two horses could easily carry as much or more, as is done now in many other dairy districts. Even of successful coöperation among farmers sympathetic critics are forced to say: "Many students of rural economics assert that coöperation as applied to the distribution and marketing of farm products is not very successful unless it is founded upon dire necessity. When the records of the organizations of the country are analyzed it becomes almost necessary to accept that statement. So long as farmers do fairly well in their own way they are not inclined to coöperate."
§ 11. #Rapid growth of farmers' selling coöperation#. Despite what has just been said, coöperation among farmers now is more developed and is growing faster than all other kinds of coöperation in America. This is most marked in farming communities in the West, especially in California and in the Middle Western or Northwestern states (e.g., Minnesota and Wisconsin). There the farmers are younger, and many have been educated in the state agricultural colleges. They all produce nearly the same kinds of crops of staple produce which must be shipped to distant markets. The need of uniting to get what they thought would be fair treatment from the railroads, and to protect themselves against the abuses of the competitive commission salesagents, seems to have given the first impetus to farmers' coöperation.
The most notable developments were those of the California Fruit Exchange and of coöperative societies of the Northwest for marketing grain. The membership of the former is made up entirely of the local citrus growers' associations in California. It has a complete organization of selling agents in the Eastern cities and a remarkably efficient, tho simple, system of equalizing and expediting shipments. Now the agricultural coöperative associations of various kinds are multiplying all over the country, for shipping live stock, fruits, butter, cheese, and other farm products. Coöperation for these purposes called forth new activities; packing houses were built, and grain elevators and creameries and dairies, and now a goodly number of the simple manufacturing processes are undertaken by these societies, now numbering thousands.
§ 12. #Some economic features of farmers' selling coöperation#. This type of producers' selling coöperation is proving in America to be far more successful than producers' coöperation among workingmen;[3] and certain important economic features in it should be noted. The local producers' selling coöperative society is composed of farmers who as enterprisers own and carry on their own separate businesses; they are not, as in the other case, wage workers. Any productive processes undertaken by this kind of society are subordinate to the main business, being such as picking, packing, drying, preserving, and making boxes for packing. This form of coöperation with the related form of consumers' coöperation that is fostered by it, promises to have a wide extension.