St. Landry democrat., 1886-08-21
LARGE OR SMALL FARMS.
The Cause and Remedy of the Present
Agricultural Depression.

agriculture SEPS FARMERS anu OLneTS III
terested a thinking, and consequently
there is no lack of opinions and sugges-
tons as to the causes and remedies for
the existing troubles. The variety of
these, however, leave the mind in as
great quandary as before; for not only
is there variety, but considerable con-
Aict of opinion. One man thinks the
farms are too large, another AYERS they
are too small; but the most frequent
opinion, and true one in many re-
spects, is that the yield of the crops is
too small for the land under cultivation
and the expenses. and that what is
mostly wanted is an intensive culture OF
the soil in which the greatest yield is
procured on the smallest area. 1t is
most difficult and at the same time a
most interesting subject for thought and
discussion.
1t is no new question which now agi-
tates the farmers over the whole civil
lied world 1t has been coming up, has
been discussed, and has been dropped
at times during two thousand years
past. At the earliest period of settled
organization, the elder Pliny made COM
plant that ''wide farming had ruined
Italy and the provinces, from which
we may easily gather that these farmers
were distressed by their Astounding and
pressing difficulties much as we are now.
Later the poet Goldsmith deplored the
accumulation of wealth and the decay
of men:
ell fares the land. to fastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay"
And we to-day are told that the soncen-
tration of wealth in comparatively a few
hands, and the poverty of the laborers,
are the cause of all our present dissatis-
faction. Bad as it all seems to be, and
hopeless of any permanent remedy, we
can recall from our memory, or find
records in history, both ancient and
modern, abundant examples of similar
or worse state of things. In all these
periods of depressed agriculture there
has been loud complaint that the large
farms were at the bottom of it. That
old philosopher and writer, William
Cobbett, in his day, made this
charge in reference to the disas-
trous years, 1920 and 1921. when
wheat sold in England for 81
cents busheL In his Rural Rides"
he wrote: There is one farmer who
has nearly 5000 acres of land in his
hands; who has l, 400 acres Of wheat
and 5000 acres of barley. He occupies
what was once forty farms. Is it any
wonder that paupers increase?' The
logical sequence suggested hardly
seems clear, but yet it has occurred to
other thinkers, even in our own days,
when the cheap wheat of the great
grain farms of the new Northwest has
been charged as tie cause of the low
prices which farmers have suffered
from. But, then, the owners of these
very farms have in their turn complain
ed that the still cheaper wheat grown by
the poor farmers of India has so'reduced
their profits as to leave them without
any return for their capital invested,
and we see here these large farmers,
who employ great many men and
hundreds of thousands of dollars in
their business, in the very same predic-
ament as the English landlords who are
getting no rent for their farms, which
are Just now tenantless; but this condi-
ton is quite abnormal and far from be-
ing unprecedented, and is probably due
to some special but temporary causes,
which will pass away as in previous
cases, and prosperity will return as it
has done before.
We do not think the large farms have
any thing to do with it, or that small
farms are more or less desirable now
than at any previous time, and regard
as mistake the common expression of
opinion that the cultivation of five or
ten acre farms for special crops will lead
to solution of the difficulty. Its only
about a score of years ago since writer
with this belief urged in a small book
that Ten acres was enough to support
a farmer and his family" But the idea,
when tried by few persons who be-
lieved in it, was found impracticable,
except under special conditions, and ten
acre farms have decreased in number
during this period, because it has been
found that farm of one hundred to
two hundred acres really furnishes the
best opportunities for profitable culture
1t should not be forgotten that we
are passing through the crisis or climax
of change in industrial development.
If we look back through history we
shall find similar circumstances in every
case of agricultural depression. The
disastrous period of sixty years ago
above referred to, was the result of
a long and most exhaustive war in Eu-
rope, which impoverished every nation,
and compelled the people to work under
enormous disadvantages in repairing
the wastes OF the thirty years previously.
The present condition is somewhat diff
ferent, as it is not the waste of war so
much, perhaps, as the waste of labor,
which is really capital, in the vast ex-