Southern standard. (McMinnville, Tenn.) 1879-current, 1891-02-28

in large measure, that immense sur
plus OF farm products which has done
so much toward feeding the millions
of Europe, in depressing prices, in
causing the worldwide impoverish-
ment of the cultivator which presents
80 difficult problem to the legislator,
is the cause of vanishing rent~roll
and the landlords unhappiness,
While Improvements in the means
of transportation by sea and land
have facilitated the feeding the people
of western Europe, and the carrying
away Of the third of their children
annually cast off, and fastened the
development of Indian wheat exporo
tation and the opening of millions of
most productive farms in the Missis-
sippi valley and elsewhere-yet such
improvements have acted only in an
auxiliary manner in bringing about
a reduction in the price of food and
the value of land, and long since
spent their force in this direction.
The primary cause of much of the i'm
provement in the means of transpor-
automatically in America-and the
change which came over the agricul-
tural interests of France, as we'll as of
all other European countries, during
the eigth and ninth decades, has been
the rapid agricultural development
which the absence Of forests permitted
in the prairie regions of America, thus
enabling the settler to bring his land
at once into state of production that
in wooded district would have re-
quired full generation. Had the
forests that clothed so much of the
surface of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana
and Wisconsin, extended westward to
the Tooth meridian, agricultural de-
velopment would have been so much
less rapid and complete that pOpula-
ton and domestic consumption
would, in all probability, have kept
pace with production and the land
, lords and cultivators of western
Europe been enabled to exact a con-
, tinually increasing proportion of the
earnings of the people for the needed
food; and instead of increasing the
imposts on farm products, we should
see the rulers Of Europe vying with
each other-as they shortly within
their haste to throw open the custom
houses for the free entry of all ALI
mentary substances, and the lands of
, Europe and America steadily and
rapidly advancing in value.
In 1885 the cultivated area of the
United States-eXclusive of that em~
plOyed in growing the cotton export
8 ed in excess of home requirement
reached its maximum at 100000
, acres, equal, at the ascertained rates
, of yield and domestic consumption,
to the subsistence of 7 100000 people.
, Such cultivated area, in excess Of
! home needs, having since diminish
E ed by more than 100000 acres, is,
p at the standard of living now obtain
;. ing, sufficient for the subsistence of
G 100000 people; hence it follows that
if there were 100000 more people
! in the United States, we shOuld-of
o agricultural staples-have naught
but cotton and tobacco for export;
h and when the population shall have
increased so as to absorb the products
l.. of the meagre current additions to
Q the area in cultivation and the eX-
4 listing surplus of 100000 cultivated
# acres, we shall have neither bread
O nor meat to export beyond possible
5. part of the beef product of plain and
~ mountain pasture. AT the ratio OBJ
O. tanning since 1885, in the increase of
F. population and cultivated areas, such
!. a result would be reached in 1896; but
having now one eighth more people
% than five years since, the yearly in
# crement is likely to be an eighth
!. greater, while the additions to the
# cultivated area, will, in consequence
" of the exhaustion of the arabic por-
IN ton of the public domain, not be halt
70 as great as the additions made during
the last half of the ninth decade;
hence home needs are likely to be
:, such as to require the entire food
- product of our farms as early as 1895,
- and knowing the rates at which pop
ulation and production are increas'
ing, it is difficult to conceive of any
possible combination of conditions
=, which can postpone such result be-
-" yond 1896. G. WOOD DAVIS.
st Eupepsy.
r. This is what Won Oupht TO have. iT