Evolution of American Agriculture/Chapter VIII
CHAPTER VIII
Period of reorganization.
THE REORGANIZATION of American agriculture began with the passage of the Experiment Station Act in 1887. This act marked the beginning of a comprehensive and systematic application of experimental science to agriculture and was the signal for great activity in research work in all lines of agricultural endeavor. The Experiment Stations are really the foundation of the new agriculture.
As we have seen, the steady stream of settlers and homesteaders pouring Westward had populated the desirable lands and made it profitable to push the railways entirely across the continent. Great interest was developed in the irrigation of the arid regions and the drainage of the swampy sections, and intensive agriculture began to be preached. It was recognized that agriculture expands quite as readily by better cultural methods and a greater production per acre as it does by placing more land under cultivation. In fact, since the free lands were now occupied, the price of land generally was greatly advanced and only an intensive cultivation would pay dividends upon the investment now demanded.
The old days of cheap land and dear labor had passed and the inefficiency and waste of the old farming must go with them. The avenue of escape from wage labor was being definitely closed, the era of tenantry and wage farming was coming in—an era of dear land and cheap labor—and it began to pay better to raise 100 bushels of corn on an acre than to raise 100 bushels on four acres, as had been done before.
The higher land becomes and the cheaper labor becomes in relation to it, the more intense will the cultural methods become. In other words, the farmer will adopt the method that gives the best returns on the sum of the interest, maintenance and labor charges.
The demand for better agricultural methods was met by the Experiment Stations and the demand for more land was met with great schemes for irrigation and drainage. The Carey Irrigation Act was passed in 1894, granting arid lands to the states for irrigation development purposes.
This was followed in 1902 by the National Reclamation Act, under which the greatest of the irrigation projects have been constructed. Fifteen million acres were granted to the states under the Carey Act, and more than 2,000,000 acres reclaimed under the Act of 1902.
In the East the various states along the Atlantic seaboard took up the matter of the drainage of the great succession of swamps and marshes that extend from New Jersey to the Everglades of Florida and contain about 80,000,000 acres of land. Untouched they were not only valueless but disease breeding—the home of malaria and the yellow fever spreading mosquito. Reclaimed, they might easily support a population of 10,000,000, adding vastly to the food supply of an increasing population.
During this period a desperate warfare was carried on in the semi-arid region of the West between the cattle men and the homesteaders on "Nesters." The Campbell system of dry farming made it possible to extend the cultivated area to the very edge of the arid region and thereby restrict the open range. The "Nesters" finally prevailed and ranching materially declined. The old free life of the plains and the romance of the "trail" passed into the realm of song and story.
The general farmer is now taking the place of the range men as the breeder and feeder of cattle. Better methods are producing more and better cattle and, despite the trustification of the slaughtering business by the packing interests, the raising and finishing of "block" cattle is a most attractive side of modern farming.
It is also interesting to note that the general farming situation has resulted in a revival of cattle raising in the mountainous sections of the East, from Maine to Georgia.
This period has also seen the development of Agricultural Colleges in all the states, the spread of agricultural knowledge by means of the Farmers' Institutes, and field demonstrations, and the quasi-government direction of rural activity by means of County Agricultural Agents sent out by the Department of Agriculture. Indeed, so great is the progress of farming on the scientific side that it seems likely to enter the ranks of the learned and dignified professions.
At least, scientific research and methods have finally brought the art of agriculture to a paying basis and the up-to-date farmer, equipped with a scientific education and technical training steps forward very much in advance of the so-called business men and intellectuals of the rural towns.
This period, just now closing, is really too near to us to properly evaluate its material achievements. Socially, it has been a period of concentration; the open spaces have been populated and the dissimilar elements of the people so pressed together as to produce crystalization—the American type is commencing to appear. Economically the line of cleavage between the farmer and the farm laborer has widened into a gulf, across which they glare at each other in uncompromising hostility. Also, the question of agricultural finance as opposed to commercial finance has come up for a final solution. The borrowing farmers have forced upon the statute books the Rural Credit Act, hoping thereby to achieve financial equality between the agricultural and other industrial interests, but these hopes are illusory.
With the great increase in farm values caused by the inflation due to the war, the expectations of the tenant class to become land-owners through the Rural Credit Banks are doomed to disappointment. Instead of creating an era of small farms, the tendency is for the big farmer to finance further purchases of land through the credit banks, and these are a decided tendency towards concentration. The "Land Trust" is well upon the way.
The universal application of machinery to agriculture has definitely industrialized farming and created three distinct classes in the rural regions—the farmers, the tenants, and the laborers. Unionism has finally penetrated to this latter group and for the past five years their Industrial Union has been steadily growing until it has become a factor in the agricultural situation in all the Trans-Mississippi region and on the Pacific Coast. Not only have the laborers organized and improved their conditions, but in the grain growing states they have produced a political revolution—the formation of the NON-Partisan League being directly traceable to the pressure exerted from below by the Agricultural Workers' Industrial Union No. 400, of the Industrial Workers of the World.
"100% American."