Walker Lake bulletin. (Hawthorne, Nev.) 1883-1926, 1894-12-05
TOO MANY FARMERS.
Farmers are Somewhat Handi-
capped by Competition.
ENCOURAGED BY THE G0VERNM ENT.
The Homestead Act Should be Repealed.
The Forcible Argument Used
by j. R. Dodge.
ENCOURAGED BY THE GOVERNMENT.


to time in lamenting the fact that tn,
people were going away from the farms
to take part in the activities of cities
and towns. Should it be lamented ol
will it be a relief from excessive pro
duction of food supplies? J. r. Dodge,
ex-statistcian of the Department of Ag.
riculture. seems to think that possibly
we would be better off if we had fewer
farmers, and he builds up his argument
in this way: How shall the area of land
in cultivation be reduced? If the
homestead act cannot be repealed, as
those for pre-emption and timber cul-
ture have been, how can the tendency
to overproduction of the staples be
overcome? Farmers are handicapped
by competition which is encouraged by
the Government, by the railroads, by
land speculators, which makes produce
too abundant-too cheap. AS car
loads of stale berries or poor peaches
are dumped into New York bay to give
value to the better qualities remaining,
what surplus of agriculture can be
used to fill up the slough of despond
into which our farmers have fallen?
Lately took long look ahead, and
showed, for the benefit of those who
are fooling farmers and inviting more
competition with the absurd expecta-
tion of immediate land scarcity and
high prices, that there are lands which
future capital may prepare at much ex-
pense for the use OF the millions COM
ing in the twentieth century, and even
queried whether, in the dim and dis
tant future, a landed aristocracy might
arise to limit the free use of the soil by
the teeming millions of Gods poor.
But now the burden of our thought is
how to make agriculture profitable to
those engaged in it upon the extended
aud thinly fertilized areas now occu-
pied, which in cultivation bring a gross
value of SO to $40 per acre for some
crops, and $40 to $12 for others. 1t is
certainly not by charging the area and
diffusing to greater attenuation the
labor spread over it. A reduction of
titled area would at once accomplish
the purpose, but when a farmers son
goes to the city into trade and indus
try, the cry goes up from agricultural
writers of the evil of abandoning the
farm and the ways of the fathers.
Let them go to the city Especially the
dullards of the FARM, become consum-
ers of farm products and producers of
something else,
There are too many farmers, just as
there is too much tillible land. They
are standing in one another's way.
Forty years ago about half the popula-
ton was directly supported by agricul-
ture. In 1870 there was forty-seven
per cent. directly engaged in agricul-
tural occupations; in 1880 about forty
four per cent. The percentage is less
to-day, and will be still less in the fu-
ture, as it should be. With the i'm
provements in implements and pro-
cesses. it will not be long till the agri-
cultural population will be reduced to
one third. Were two-thirds to-day in
other employments. it would prove a
blessing to those remaining in agricul-
ture, who would find ample employ
ment and obtain paying prices for farm
produce. In countries of densest popu-
lation, the proportion of farmers is still
smaller. In England it is less than
one-eighth of the people, who are still
able to supply full half the wants of
the population, from scarcely more than
half of the area, much of which is taken
up by sites of cities and towns, pleasure
grounds and hunting preserves.
We are told that the titled land pei
head is less than formerly. 1t is true.
There is slight decline. The census
of 1890 makes the area in cereals 140,-
217,545 acres, 2.24 per head, an in
crease of 81, ,585,766 acres since 1880,
when the supply per head was 2.37. a
decrease of nearly six per cent. The
influences of the two seasons were near
ly the same, as indicated by about the
same condition of crops, and yet the
total production per head was &c.
bushels per head, as compared with
53.78 in 1880. This indicates ten
dency to increasing yield per acre.
The number of acres in farms to each
inhabitant in. 1880 was 1859, and 9.95
in 1890, decline of seven per cent.
But the so-called improved land'' Ia
term not very definitely discriminated)
averaged 5.68 acres in 1880 and 5.7l in
1890; no material difference. These
figures show tendency to more care
full utilization of farm lands and to a
relative reduction in tillage, with in
crease in rate of yield-in short, a
slight movement in the direction of
progressive agriculture
The conservative farmer may object
to increase of yield, to more intensive
culture, as tending to counteract reduc-
tion of area, and still tending to over
production. Some of our agricultural
writer's have remarked that such facility
for production is no remedy for de-
pressed state of agriculture. A few
skilled sultiystors may fare better, the