Part 5

Now, however, the public lands available for agriculture have been exhausted; practically all that remains is situated in the arid zone, and needs systematic irrigation before it can be made available for any use except that of grazing. There are still about 100,000,000 acres of choice land in Indian reservations, and as a consequence of the pressure upon this resource and also because of the unwisdom of the old reservation system, the policy has now been adopted of dividing these lands among the Indians in individual ownership, under careful safeguards, and of assimilating the Indians to the rest of the population.

The exhaustion of the fertile and well-watered lands of the Mississippi Valley has forced the later comers to have recourse to the arid soils in the almost rainless region west of the one hundredth meridian of longitude. The character of farming under such climatic conditions must of necessity be very different from what it is in the rainy districts, and the versatility and adaptability of the American farmer is well illustrated by the development which has taken place there. The first effort at the solution of the problem was in irrigation, a method which had been early practised by the Pueblo Indians, and later and most successfully by the Mormon settlers in Utah. By 1900, according to the census, 7,539,545 acres were under 11 irrigation. While most of the work up to that time had been done by private initiative, a demand arose for irrigation at government expense, in response to which Congress in 1902 provided for the building of irrigation works out of the proceeds of the sales of public lands. Regulation and conservation of the limited water supply by governmental authority, either state or national, is indeed essential to the success of irrigation and will probably be the policy of the future.

A second and even more interesting development of American agriculture is the so-called dry-farming which is being successfully introduced into the semi-arid regions. Carefully selected seeds and plants of crops especially adapted to these climatic conditions are used, and then a very careful and intensive method of tillage is followed. The soil is plowed deep and thoroughly pulverized so that the roots can strike down to the deeper levels and absorb all the moisture available. Extraordinary results have already been attained, and the region that the older geographies labeled “The Great American Desert” bids fair to become one of the most flourishing districts in the country.

That part of the area of the United States which has already been reduced to private ownership is divided into 5,700,000 farms. As almost half of the land in these farms is uncultivated, being forest, waste land, or pasture, it is evident that there is still room for a great increase in the agricultural production of the United States without bringing additional land into the field. The average size of these farms is 146 acres, which looms large indeed when compared with the 20-acre farms of France and the 60-acre farms of Great Britain. The difference is of course due to the difference in the methods of agriculture and the character of the crops, the European conditions demanding intensive cultivation while our methods are still largely extensive.

A more important question even than the number and size of farms, from 12 an economic point of view, is that of ownership. In 1880, when for the first time the federal census collected the statistics of farm tenure, the gratifying result was announced that three-quarters (74.5 per cent) of the farms in the United States were cultivated by their owners. The last census however showed that the proportion had fallen to 64.7 per cent in 1900, and alarm has been expressed that our democratic conditions of land ownership are giving way to a system of tenantry, that the ownership of our farms is being concentrated in fewer hands, and that methods of large-scale production in agriculture are crushing out the independent farmer as effectively as they have crowded out the small manufacturer and retailer in other fields. Correctly interpreted, however, the statistics seem to indicate that the growth of the tenant class marks the endeavor of farm laborers and farmers’ sons to establish themselves as independent farmers rather than the fall of former owners to the rank of tenants. The great majority of the young men are laborers, the majority of those in middle life are tenants, while the older men are for the most part owners of farms. There seems to be a healthy progress upward in the advancement of wage laborers and farmers’ children, first to tenancy, and finally, with increased ability and capital, to farm ownership. Moreover most of the rented farms are hired by negroes, the change in whose status from slave to tenant marks a great advance.

Another change in our farming population that has been viewed with considerable misgiving is the movement from the farm to the city and the decline in the proportion of the agricultural population to the whole. Indeed the change has been startling, as the United States has passed from a primitive agricultural stage of development to a highly organized manufacturing and commercial stage. From 86.3 per cent of the population in 1820 the percentage of those engaged in agriculture 13 fell steadily until it reached 35.7 per cent in 1900. Many persons have thought that such a movement indicated the desertion of our farms owing to the greater attraction of the cities, and the disappearance of a healthy agricultural population. It has indicated rather a great improvement in the arts of agriculture, whereby one person today, working with improved machinery and better knowledge, can produce nearly three times as much as his grandfather did. The labor set free has gone to the cities--cities of over 8,000 inhabitants now contain one-third of our population as compared with one-thirtieth one hundred years ago--and there produces the thousand and one things which contribute to our modern well-being. A smaller number can now raise all the food necessary to feed the population; that the rest are free to do other things must certainly be counted again, though the conditions under which work in the factory and life in the city are at present constructed leave much to be desired.

Writing about 1865 an eminent English traveler, Sir S. Morton Pets, apologized for calling the United States an agricultural country; today he would be spared this worry, for the Census of 1900 gave the net value of products of the farm as $3,764,000,000 and of pure manufactures as $5,981,000,000. Indeed since 1890 the value of the manufactures of the country has been larger than of the farm products, and the United States now ranks as one of the leading manufacturing nations of the world. Nevertheless the value and amount of the agricultural products are stupendous; the United States leads all countries in the production of dairy products, corn, and wheat, and the greater part of the lumber, meats, tobacco, and cotton which enter into the world’s trade come from her forests and fields.

While the territory of the United States is well adapted by nature to the cultivation of a great variety of agricultural products, as a 14 matter of fact only four branches of agriculture showed a total product in 1900 of more than one million dollars. These were the raising of live stock, and the production of hay and grain, cotton, and dairy produce. The regional distribution of these products was fairly well marked, over half of the live stock and of the hay and grain farms being situated in the North Central States, nearly half of the dairy farms being located in the North Atlantic division, while practically all the cotton is confined to the southern zone; the same may also be said of tobacco and sugar. The semi-arid region of the West is given over almost exclusively to stock-raising. Iowa and Illinois lead as agricultural states.

The character of agriculture in the United States, as in all new countries, has hitherto been extensive, that is, a small amount of labor and capital has been applied to a relatively large amount of land, and only the cream of the soil has been skimmed off, as it were. Where labor is dear and land is cheap this is the most economical method for the farmer; and, although European critics have severely criticized our system of “earth butchery,” whereby the fertility of the soil has been exhausted by constant cropping, with no effort to restore the exhausted properties by fertilizing, the practice has been justified by the conditions which produced it. Already the practical exhaustion of the free public domain has had the effect of raising the price of lands in the Middle West, and this in turn will cause a more careful and intensive system of cultivation. In other words, as our social and industrial conditions approach those of Europe more closely, we may expect our agricultural methods to do so also. One of the most serious practical problems now confronting the American farmer is the change from the old, wasteful, extensive methods to the new, careful, intensive methods of farming. Those who cannot make the change will complain of the unprofitableness of agriculture, but to those who successfully meet the new conditions the future offers 15 much greater rewards than even the era of free land could produce.

It has been said that the year 1887 marked the beginning of a new stage of development in American agriculture--that of reorganization-- because in that year Congress passed the Experiment Station Act. This marked the application of the principles of experimental science to agriculture on a more comprehensive and systematic scale than had ever been attempted before. Stimulated by the increased activity of the government experiment stations, the agricultural colleges have expanded their work. They are offering practical courses to the farmers, and in co-operation with the railroads, some of them have recently been sending out special lecturers, with moving laboratories, to bring the teachings of science as close home to the producers as possible. Finally, the wonderful work being done by Burbank and others in selecting and crossing, by travelers for the federal Agricultural Department in securing plants from all over the world suited to our varied climatic conditions, and by the experiment stations and agricultural colleges in spreading the new knowledge among the farmers and putting it into actual practice--all these departures promise to revolutionize agriculture, and to make it, as one writer has said, a learned profession.

The production of cereals is the most important branch of agriculture, comprising corn, wheat, oats, barley, rye, buckwheat, and rice. Since the building of the trunk railroads, by which the western territory was given access to a market, the progress of cereal production has been extremely rapid, nor does there seem to be any observable slackening. With the introduction of improved varieties of spring wheat, cereal production is being pushed further up into British Canada and our own Northwest. The center of cereal production has moved steadily westward, from eastern Indiana in 1860 to eastern Iowa in 1900. With the practical exhaustion of unoccupied land suitable for grain-raising in the United States, it is clear that the future 16 extension of the industry depends rather upon improvements in the methods of agriculture than upon the addition of new lands. The very practical problem here presented to the American farmer if he wishes to maintain his supremacy in the world’s markets is being nobly and successfully met by the agricultural experiment stations. They are teaching the farmer how to increase his yield of wheat, for example, by scientific seed selection and more careful methods of tillage, from an average of 12.5 bushels per acre for the whole country in 1900 to treble that amount.

Of the separate crops corn is by far the most important, representing 60 per cent of the total value of all cereals produced in 1900. Most of the corn is fed to stock throughout the so-called “corn belt” and comes to market in the form of pork and beef. Although corn is very nutritious and is a favorite article of diet in this country in various forms, astonishingly little of it is exported. The development of a foreign market still awaits the enterprise of the American farmer and food manufacturer.

The production of live stock is essentially a frontier industry, and while it will probably always be carried on in the semi-arid grazing districts of the West, which can be reclaimed for agriculture only at considerable expense, it already shows a relative decline. Owing to the great growth of the population the domestic demand now consumes almost all the meat produced and the exports are declining. This is one of the reasons for the recent rise in the price of meat. The industry is extensive. Quite the opposite is true of the dairy industry, which is intensive, being carried on for the most part in the vicinity of large cities where land is expensive. The changing character of agriculture and the fact that it is itself a business enterprise demanding a knowledge of market conditions and business methods is well illustrated by the nature of the dairy industry. 17 Dairies are inspected and must conform to certain standards, the milk must be sterilized and shipped, often by special trains, to the cities. Over a third of the butter and practically all of the cheese is now made in factories instead of on the farm, so that it is a question whether the latter at least should not be classified as a product of manufacture rather than of agriculture.

Of the last of the four important branches of agriculture, namely cotton-raising, there is not so much to be said. Owing to the intensive nature of its cultivation, machinery has never been applied on a large scale to its production, as was done in the case of hay and grain. The wasteful methods that prevailed before the Civil War in the South have been largely corrected, and the tendency to sterility of the soil has been met by the increased use of fertilizers. The statistics of cotton crops for the past thirty years do not indicate any decrease in productiveness, and show that the point of diminishing returns has not yet been reached. A peculiar and interesting feature about cotton production is that it is largely in the hands of tenants. The old slave plantations of the South have been broken up into small holdings and many of these are operated by tenants, negroes and whites, who are too poor or too improvident to buy the land outright. The main problems connected with cotton culture are labor problems; and the question has often been anxiously asked whether the free negro will produce as much as the former slave. This can now be confidently answered in the affirmative, though it yet remains to be seen whether he can be made as efficient a producer as his white competitor. Upon the answer to that question depends not merely the future of cotton production, but the economic salvation of the negro himself. The constantly expanding use of cotton goods assures a brilliant future to the cotton-growing states of the South, for not merely is there an assured market in America and Europe, but the primitive peoples of Asia and Africa may be depended upon to absorb increasing quantities 18 of cotton fabrics.

Hand in hand with the heedless extensive methods of agriculture in the past went wasteful use and even destruction of our forest resources. The annual cut of lumber in the United States is today about forty billion feet board measure; at this rate of consumption it is estimated that the present available supply will last only 35 to 50 years. It will doubtless surprise most readers to learn that about three-quarters of the annual wood cut is consumed as fuel, probably half of our population still depending upon wood instead of coal for fuel. The rapid exhaustion of our forest supplies, with the attendant effects upon moisture, floods, etc., has brought the question of forest preservation to the front as a practical economic problem. We have been squandering the heritage of our children and efforts are now being made to repair some of the loss before we are declared bankrupt. In 1898 the Federal Government began practical work in the introduction of forestry; this received a great stimulus in 1905 when the care of the national forest reserves, embracing over 60,000,000 acres, was put under the control of the Forest Service. Over 150 trained foresters are employed, who manage the forests on the public lands and co-operate with private owners in the introduction of scientific forestry. Several states have taken up the movement, and there is every indication that scientific methods of culture such as prevail in Prussia and other European states, will supplant our destructive denudation of the land. That it is high time to devote attention to the better conservation of this natural resource is made evident by the high and increasing price of lumber.

There is one other natural resource the conditions of whose supply resemble those of forestry and of agriculture in general; this is the fisheries. With careful use, providing for depreciation, and restoring the elements destroyed, all of these should prove inexhaustible and 19 should continue to furnish man with food and lumber for all time. But as in the case of the other two industries, so with the fisheries, we have been using up our capital and declaring enormous dividends at the expense of the future. The value of the annual catch of fish is $40,000,000, which is exceeded only by that of Great Britain. The problem of the better conservation of this resource has been taken in hand by the Federal Government, through the Fish Commission, and much has been done to repair our early prodigality by restocking lakes and streams with fish. More stringent fish and game laws have also been passed by most of the states, designed to prevent the extermination of the supply.

III. THE MINERAL RESOURCES OF THE UNITED STATES.

The natural resources of any country may be divided into two broad groups, which call for different treatment and give rise to very different problems. There are, on the one hand, resources which are exhaustible but which can be restored again; and on the other, resources which, once exhausted, can never be replaced again by human agency. Under the first head come the soil, the forests, the fisheries, and even the water power, for all of these can be made to yield steady returns to man for thousands of years, if used intelligently. Under the second head belong coal, petroleum, natural gas, and all the minerals; man may discover substitutes, he may economize in the use of these substances, but he can never augment their supply. In the previous section we considered some of the problems that arise in the use of the soil in agriculture, and those connected with our forests and fisheries. For the most part they had to do with the intelligent use of these agencies and the restoration or repair of the elements destroyed. In this section we are met by a very different problem, namely, the conservation of a limited supply 20 of resources and their most economical application to the needs of mankind.

We can distinguish two contrasting answers to this problem, one careless and optimistic, and the other pessimistic and fearful of the future. According to the former point of view we should not borrow trouble of the future; man’s career has been one of constant progress; when he has been confronted with a difficulty he has invariably met it. Indeed necessity has been the most prolific mother of invention. If our coal supplies are exhausted, man will devise means of utilizing the heat of the sun, the force of the tides, the motion of the waves, the stores of electrical energy in the air, all of which will yield inexhaustible supplies of heat and energy. If our stores of iron should fail, some enterprising inventor would surely discover a practicable and commercially profitable method of extracting aluminum from clay. New sources of raw materials will undoubtedly be discovered before the old ones give out, and we may confidently expect that, while the material bases of a high civilization may shift somewhat, they will never crumble and fall.

The other school has sounded a louder note of alarm. At the present rate of consumption the coal and iron deposits of Europe and America must soon be exhausted. The supplies of copper, lead, and other metals in favorable locations are also being consumed at an alarming rate, and no other known supplies are in sight. Within the past century scientific knowledge and engineering skill have combined to unlock the storehouses of the geologic ages, and now like prodigals we are dissipating our fortunes. To treat these exhaustible sources of supply as permanent sources of income, without regard for the future, is based upon unsound theory and must lead to reckless practice.

As so often in opposing counsels, there is an element of truth in each 21 of these contrasting points of view. But the safer plan is not to wait until we have exhausted our natural resources before remedying the evil, but to heed the warnings now. A long step in this direction was taken in May, 1908, when a conference of the governors of all the states, together with college and railroad presidents, business men and others, was held at the White House upon invitation of President Roosevelt. As a result of this gathering a National Conservation Commission was appointed, which will make an exhaustive investigation into the amount and rate of consumption of the natural resources of the country and suggest measures for their better utilization and preservation through national, state, and local action. In line with this movement two other commissions have been established, one on inland waterways and one on country life. As a result of the national awakening we may expect to see a more rational use made of the gifts of nature, and a better organization of our national life. Heretofore the ideal of our business men has been to exploit, one might almost say pillage, the stores of nature as rapidly as possible; it was a pioneer stage of industry, inevitable but wasteful. From now on the new conception must be the restoration where possible of exhausted elements, as of the soil and the forests, and the careful use of the non-renewable stores of wealth so that at least we shall not make them engines of destruction, as in the case of floods and devastation occasioned by careless hydraulic mining in the West. Let us now turn to a more detailed consideration of the separate items in our inventory of national wealth.

Our modern civilization may be said to rest upon coal, for upon its possession depends man’s ability to utilize most of the other items of his wealth. Passing over its utility as a fuel to heat our houses, without coal it would be impossible to smelt the iron needed in all our industries, to drive the machinery, to run our locomotives or 22 steamboats, or in a word to carry on the manifold activities of our industrial life. According to the United States Geological Survey there are 335,000 square miles of coal-bearing strata in this country, but the larger part of it is too thin or impure to be useful for industrial purposes; it serves in many localities however as domestic fuel, as in the case of the lignite deposits of the Northwest. An estimate of Professor Tarr places the coal-producing area in the United States at not over 50,000 square miles. At the present rate of consumption--over 350,000,000 tons in 1905--it has been estimated that the anthracite coal deposits will last for only fifty years longer, while we have only enough bituminous coal for one hundred years.

The large deposits of coal in England and their early development gave that country a great advantage over Europe. But as long ago as 1861 Professor Jevons, a noted English economist, sounded a note of alarm: he prophesied that because of the superior size and character of the coal deposits of America, industrial supremacy must inevitably pass to this country. His prediction has already been verified in the case of coal and iron production, and will probably soon prove true of textiles also. The coal deposits of the United States are thirty-seven times as great as those of England, but at the present rate of mining are threatened with exhaustion at no distant date. It has been estimated that there are in China coal deposits capable of supplying the world with fuel for another thousand years. But such estimates are, in the present state of our knowledge about China, the merest guesses, and if true would seem to point rather to the future industrial supremacy of that country in the world’s markets.

Two-thirds of the coal mined in the United States is obtained from the Appalachian field, extending from New York to Alabama, Pennsylvania being the largest coal-producing state in the Union. In the iron and steel industries most of the coal is coked, as it is better for 23 blast-furnace use in this form, giving greater heat and containing less sulphur or other injurious substances than coal. Owing to the smaller bulk and cost of transporting ore, most of the iron and steel industries are situated in the vicinity of the coal supply, as in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Alabama, etc.

Petroleum or coal-oil is closely allied to coal in its origin and distribution and must be classed with it as a most important product, not only for industrial uses, but also because of the contributions it has made to the comforts of living. In its production the United States ranks first, being closely followed by Russia; together these two countries furnish over 90 per cent of the world’s supply of petroleum. Enormous economies have been effected in its production and distribution, which is done by piping the crude oil underground to the refineries. For illuminating purposes it is the cheapest form of artificial light; as a fuel it is supplanting coal, where the latter is dear or its cost of carriage high, as on ocean steamers. Finally, the construction of light and convenient gasoline motors has given it great importance as a source of motive power. Natural gas is closely related to petroleum, but the supply has been so reduced by rapid and reckless use that it has but a limited economic outlook and is of local significance only.

Of all the metals iron must be considered the most useful for man, far surpassing the so-called precious metals in economic importance. Its great value is so evident that its production and use have often been taken as a criterion of the material progress of a community. Iron is the only metal that can be welded, and is accordingly of great significance, whether in making strong machinery, as the shafts of ocean steamships or the framework of a twenty-story building, or, in the form of steel, the most delicate surgical instruments or watch springs. Judged by the test of iron ore production the United States 24 ranks high, for it turns out about four-fifths of the world’s supply; all of this is used for domestic consumption, in its own blast furnaces, though much of it is afterwards exported in the form of pig iron or structural iron or steel. Though iron is universally distributed throughout creation, it must occur in large beds or deposits before it can be profitably mined. “The most favorable situation of an iron ore for profitable extraction is near good coking coal for smelting and limestone for a flux, as in the Birmingham district of Alabama; and in such a situation even low-grade ores can be worked profitably. Unless this is the case, iron ore cannot be extensively mined excepting under conditions of great abundance and economical methods of transportation, as in the Lake Superior district, where thick and remarkably uniform beds of good ore occur in such a position that water transportation to the market is possible. Where these conditions do not exist, iron-mining is feasible only on a small scale for the local market. Thus, in the Rocky Mountains there are almost inexhaustible supplies of iron, often of a high grade, which are at present of no value whatsoever.”

The most wonderful iron-mining region in the United States and probably in the world lies in the northern part of Michigan and Minnesota, where five ranges or lines of hills contain immense deposits. These lie so near the surface that they can be dug out of open pits at a cost of from 10 to 50 cents a ton, against $1 a ton in a shaft or underground mine. Three-quarters of the iron ore produced in the United States is mined in this district. Its proximity to the lake ports makes possible its transportation to the iron and steel manufacturing centers at very low rates. Machinery has been applied on an immense scale to the work of mining, loading and unloading the ore. Steam shovels scoop up the ore from the open pit, filling cars at the 25 rate of almost one a minute; the work of loading this into the ore ships at the ports is equally expeditious, only about two hours being required to load an ore ship of 6,000 tons, while the work of unloading is performed for the most part by an endless chain of buckets and traveling cranes. By these means an ultra-intensive exploitation of these magnificent deposits is taking place and it is a question whether they will not soon be exhausted. “But the Americans,” writes Professor Leroy-Beaulieu, a friendly but keen critic of our industrial development, “relying on the constant good-will of nature, are confident that they will discover either new and productive ranges in this district, or rich deposits in other districts.”

The precious metals have received more than their fair share of attention, for the industrial progress of the world is much less dependent upon their presence in large and easily obtained quantities than it is upon the more common metals. Nevertheless they are of importance both in the arts and especially because of their use as money. In their production the United States stands second, being surpassed in the output of gold by the Transvaal in Africa and in that of silver by Mexico. The production of these metals has always in the world’s history proceeded spasmodically, and a speculative spirit has usually been present. More recently, however, scientific geological knowledge and improved metallurgical methods are removing the industry of gold and silver mining from a gambling venture to a legitimate industry. The practical problem at present confronting American gold-mining companies is to reduce expenses, some of the principal bearings having for some years shown signs of exhaustion, as for instance in the Cripple Creek district of Colorado. There is always a chance however that new gold fields may be discovered to make good the exhaustion of the old. In the case of silver, on the other hand, the metal is found in such abundance that the present rate of production 26 seems almost indefinitely assured; a slight increase of the price or improvements in the art of extracting the metal will at any time bring enlarged supplies on the market. Africa, Australia, and the United States produce almost all the world’s supply of gold, Colorado being the leading state in the last-named country. Mexico and the United States together produce over two-thirds of the world’s silver, the leading rank in this country being held by Montana.