and Mount Bellew (Co. Galway); while lectures are given at
farmers' meetings by itinerant instructors. The Department
carries on agricultural experiment-stations at Athenry
(Co. Galway), Ballyhaise (Co. Cavan) and Clonakilty (Co.
Cork), where farm apprentices are received and instructed.
Agriculture in the United States
Agriculture has been the chief and most characteristic work
of the American people, that in which they have achieved the
greatest results in proportion to the resources at command, that
in which their economic superiority has been most strikingly
manifest. In ten years from 1790, the mean population of the
period being 4,500,000, 65,000 sq. m. were for the first time
brought within the limits of settlement, crossed with roads and
bridges, covered with dwellings, both public and private, much
of it also cleared of primeval forest; and this in addition
to keeping up and improving the whole extent of previous
settlements, and building towns and cities, at a score of favoured
points. In the next decade, the mean number of inhabitants
being about 6,500,000, population extended itself over 98,000
sq. m. of absolutely new territory, an area eight times as
large as Holland. Between 1810 and 1820, besides increasing
the density of population on almost every league of the older
territory, besides increasing their manufacturing capital
twofold, in spite of a three years' war, the people of the
United States advanced their frontier to occupy 101,000 sq.
m., the mean population being 8,250,000. Between 1820 and
1830, 124,000 sq. m. were brought within the frontier and made
the seat of habitation and cultivation; between 1830 and 1840,
175,000 sq. m.; between 1840 and 1850, 215,000 sq. m. The Civil
War, indeed, checked the westward flow of population, though
it caused no refluence, but after 1870 great progress was
made in the creation of new farms and the development of old.
That which has allowed this great work to be done so rapidly
and fortunately has been, first, the popular tenure of the soil,
and, secondly, the character of the agricultural class. At
no time have the cultivators of the soil north of the Potomac
and Ohio constituted a peasantry in the ordinary sense of that
term. They have been the same kind of men, out of precisely
the same homes, generally with the same early training, as
those who filled the learned professions or who were engaged
in manufacturing or commercial pursuits. Switzerland and
Scotland have, in a degree, approached the United States in
this particular; but there is no other considerable country
where as much mental activity and alertness has been applied
to the cultivation of the soil as to trade and manufactures.
But even the causes which have been adduced would have failed
to produce such effects but for the exceptional inventive
ingenuity of the American. The mechanical genius which
has entered into manufacturing in the United States, the
engineering skill which has guided the construction of the
greatest works of the continent, have been far exceeded
in the hurried ``improvements'' of the pioneer farm; in
the housing of women, children and live stock and gathered
crops against the storms of the first few winters; in
the rough-and-ready reconnaissances which determined the
``lay of the land'' and the capabilities of the soil; in
the preparation for the thousand exigencies of primitive
agriculture. It is no exaggeration to say that the chief
manufacture of the United States, prior to 1900, was the
manufacture of 5,740,000 farms, comprising 841,200,000 acres.
The people of the United States, finding themselves on a
continent containing an almost limitless extent of land
of fair average fertility, having at the start but little
accumulated capital and urgent occasions for the economy of
labour, have elected to regard the land in the earliest
stages of occupation as practically of no value, and to regard
labour as of high value. In pursuance of this view they
have freely sacrificed the land, so far as was necessary, in
order to save labour, systematically cropping the fields on
the principle of obtaining the largest results with the least
expenditure, limiting improvements to what was demanded for
immediate uses, and caring little about returning to the
soil an equivalent for the properties taken from it in the
harvests of successive years. But, so far as the northern
states are concerned, the enormous profits of this alleged
wasteful cultivation have in the main been applied, not to
personal consumption, but to permanent improvements,--not
indeed to improvements of the land, but to what were still
more needed in the situation, namely, improvements upon the
land. The first-fruits of a virgin soil have been expended in
forms which have vastly enhanced the productive power of the
country. The land, doubtless, as one factor of that productive
power, became temporarily less efficient than it would have
been under a conservative European treatment; but the joint
product of the three factors--land, labour and capital--was
for the time enormously increased. Under this regimen
the fertility of the land, of course, in time necessarily
declined, sooner or later, according to the nature of the
crops grown and to the degree of original strength in the
soil. Resort was then had to new fields farther west. The
granary of the continent moved first to western New York,
thence into the Ohio valley, and then, again, to the banks
of the Mississippi. The north and south line dividing the
wheat product of the United States into two equal parts was
in 1850 drawn along the 82nd meridian (81 deg. 58 minutes 49
seconds). In 1860 that line was drawn along the 86th
(86 deg. 1 minute 38 seconds), in 1870 along the 89th (88 deg.
48 minutes 40 seconds), in 1880 along the 90th (90 deg. 30
minutes 46 seconds), in 1890 along the 93rd (93 deg. 9 minutes
18 seconds), and in 1900 along the 95th (94 deg. 59 minutes 23
seconds). Meanwhile one portion of the inhabitants of the
earlier settlements joined in the movement across the face
of the continent. As the grain centre passed on to the west
they followed it, too restless by character and habit to
find pleasure in the work of stable communities. A second
portion of the inhabitants became engaged in raising, upon
limited areas, small crops, garden vegetables and orchard
fruits, and in producing butter, milk, poultry and eggs, for
the suoply of the cities and manufacturing towns which had
been built up out of the abundant profits of the primitive
agriculture. Still another portion of the agricultural
population gradually became occupied in the more careful and
intense culture of the cereal crops upon the better lands, the
less eligible fields being allowed to spring up in brush and
wood. Deep ploughing and thorough drainage were resorted to;
fertilizers were employed to bring up and to keep up the soil;
and thus began the serious systematic agriculture of the older
states. Something continued to be done in wheat, but not
much. New York raised 13 million bushels in 1850; thirty
years later she raised 11 1/2 million bushels; and fifty years
later 10 1/2 million bushels. Pennsylvania raised 15 1/2 million
bushels in 1850; in 1880 she raised 19 1/2 million bushels; and
in 1900 20 1/2 million bushels. More is done in Indian corn
(maize), that most prolific cereal, the backbone of American
agriculture; still more is done relatively in buckwheat,
barley and rye. Pennsylvania, though the eleventh state in
wheat production in 1905, stood first in rye and second in
buckwheat (ninth in oats) New York was only twenty-first in
wheat, but first in buckwheat (tenth in barley), fourth in
rye. We do not, however, reach the full significance of
the situation until we account for the fourth portion of the
former agricultural population, in noting how naturally and
fortunately commercial and manufacturing cities spring up
in the sites which have been prepared for them by the lavish
expenditure of the enormous profits of a primitive agriculture
upon permanently useful improvements of a constructive
character. These towns are the gifts of agriculture.
Besides the extension of cultivated area, very little was
accomplished in the way of agricultural improvement before
1850. With some few exceptions the methods of cultivation were
substantially the same as those of colonial days, and were marked
by crudeness, waste and a general adherence to rule-of-thumb
principles. The year 1850 roughly marks the beginning of a
period of improvement and development. The Irish famine of
1846 and the German political troubles of 1848 were followed
by an unprecedented emigration to America of highly desirable
European labourers, for whom there were cheap and abundant
lands. The period from 1850 to 1870 was marked by a steady
growth, which, in the western states, was highly stimulated by
the Civil War. While this conflict withdrew a certain amount
of productive energy from agricultural pursuits, it tended
at the same time to increase the value of farm labour and of
farm products and to extend the use of machinery in order to
offset the deficient labour supply. Agricultural machinery
had been employed before the war, but only to a very small
extent. In 1864, 70,000 reapers and mowers were manufactured,
twice as many as in 1862, and manufacturers were unable to
supply the demand. Moreover, in the years 1860, 1861 and 1862
the wheat crops of Great Britain and the European continent
were failures, while those of the United States, far removed
from the theatre of military operations, were unusually
large. The wheat exports to Great Britain in 1861 were three
times as great as those of any previous year, and the strong
demand from abroad was an additional stimulus to higher
prices. In 1864 agricultural prices were from 100 to
200% higher than in 1861, while transportation charges had
only slightly advanced and in some instances had actually
decreased. In the middle of the war the farmers' profits
were normal; toward the end they had increased enormously.
This marvellous agricultural prosperity of a nation engaged
in one of the world's most formidable wars has no counterpart
in modern history. In the decade from 1860 to 1870 there
was a steady increase in cultivated area, in agricultural
products and in population. The value of the farm lands in
the northern states in 1870 exceeded that of 1860 by five
dollars an acre. On the other hand, the farm lands of the
southern states had declined in value to an almost equal
amount; but after 1870 these states also made substantial
progress, and in 1880 they produced more cotton than in 1860,
when the greatest crop under the slave system was grown.
Since 1870 the most important factors in this development have
been the employment of more scientific methods of production
and the more extensive use of machinery. The study of soils
with a view of adapting to them the most suitable crops and
fertilizers; the increased attention given to diversified
farming and crop rotation; the introduction and successful
growth of new plants (e.g. the date palm in Arizona and
California, and tea in South Carolina); tile drainage; the
ensilage of forage; more careful selection in breeding;
the use of inoculation to prevent Texas fever in cattle and
cholera in swine, of tuberculin to discover the presence
of tuberculosis in cows, of organic ferments to hasten
the progress of butter-making, of the ``Babcock test'' for
ascertaining the amount of fat in milk, of fungicides and
insecticides to destroy fruit and vegetable pests,--such are
