Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1893-03-02
Secretary Rusk on the Future of Agri-
culture.

| w III OuT sui anu ItlHOuS VI dkTlCulGuTt
improve so as to provide food without diff
| Guilty for all our population in 1882
1t would take the gift of prophecy to an
swer that inquiry, and though l bear a
prophets name and am a seventh son
never found myself gifted in the prophetic
line can give you my opinion as to the
probable relative production of this coun-
try when all its available land is subject to
tillage, but who Is going to tell me what
our population will be in 1893? see that
writer in a recent magazine estimates that
it may be !, 900, 600, 600 in 1890, but cannot
help thinking that in making such an esti-
mate he has indulged n little too much in
prophecy for ordinary men endowed with
but the usual number of senses.
AS to the possible productiveness of this
country would not hesitate to affirm that
not more than one-fourth Of the land avail
able for tillage in the United States is now
under cultivation. Consequently, without
any further improvements in agricultural
methods and with no more care than is ex-
ercised at present, the mere extension Of
tillage to all the available land would null
tiply our production fourfold.
Now, ! have already more than once ex-
pressed the conviction that the yield per
acre of most of our staple crops could be in
ing and the application of the best methods
now available by 30 per cent. Suppose this
improvement to take place and you have
skiold increase of our present production
Now, then, much of the land which remains
| to be brought under cultivation must be
cultivated by means of irrigation or re-
claimed by drainage, and we know that
when land is cultivated under the condi-
tions necessary to make these lands avail
able the yield is greatly in excess of that
which is cultivated by the ordinary meth
ods
All these factors must be taken into ac-
count in estimating our possible future pro
duction, and we have not yet touched upon
what inventive genius and science may
discover in the interest of greater produc-
tion and diminished waste in the next hun
dred years; but in the light of what these
agencies have accomplished in the past hun
dred years, whether the population of this
country a hundred years hence will be a
thousand million souls or not, think
have said enough to relieve your mind of
any anxiety lest your children or your chill
1ren's children should have to go hungry
for want eff sufficient productiveness Of
United States soil There is one thing more
you must remember, and that is that be-
fore our own people go hungry we will
stop exporting food products, and the aver
age exports of the past year or two would
feed quite number of hungry young
Americans.
Asregards exporting food products, while
no one can realize more than do the i'm
portance of our export trade, would OF
course rather see our own demand increase
to the extent of consuming all we produce
at home, and this suggests to me that
there is a good deal Of wild talk about
shutting off completely all immigration
from European countries. Discrimination
! rs to the class of emigrants that we should
J welcome to our shores is all very well. but