The valley now has only about one-fifth of its cultivable land actually under cultivation, with about 250,000 acres more in pasture and meadow. Two-thirds of the people live on the farms and in the small farm villages. The average Mississippi valley farmer, after paying the cost of operating his farm and keeping his family, has nothing left out of his crop returns. The smallest farms in the Willamette valley—from five to twenty acres—average a net profit of nearly nine hundred dollars
