The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-12-25
Scientific
Experiments in
the World
of Agriculture
Forage Wanted.
Written for
"The Call"
by Arthur ]. Pillsbury.

| This old world of ours is shriveling like
picked peach. By virtue OF what we are
pleased TO call extension of commerce"
we are bringing all parts OF the world into
! juxtaposition, and with the result that
competition between countries and peoples
is being greatly intensified. Already the
American farmer is the disconnected VIC
tim, not primarily of the money power"
but of rapid transit, and yetthe world, or
great parts of it, is apparently only upon
the eve of IN Accommodation both speedy
and cheap.
Electrical transmission promises much.
Eighteen hundred men are now at work on
the Panama canal and 1000 more are ex-
pected to fall to work upon it in the early
part of the year. It Will be completed.
The Nicaragua canal enterprise has gone
quite too far to permit of its being aban-
| doned and the early part of the century
| will see It's construction accomplished.
Russia is pushing a great railroad across
Siberia and will bring it to an end at some
port upon an open sea. The same power
is soon to undertake the union of the Black
Sea with the Baltic by 1000 miles of canal
and cana!ized rivers. Chicago and the
magnificent empire at its back is deter
mined to load ships of the first class upon
| the great American lakes and not unload
them until they have reached their ports
OF destination in the uttermost parts of the
earth, and Chicago will not rest until the
feat has been accomplished. A desperate
hunger for gold is pushing railroads into
and will push them across the Dark CONT
nent.
Argentine and Brazil are opening up
their vast interiors to settlement and
development by European enterprise
Plucky little Japan, profting by the lesson
| she learned forty-two years ago at the
mouths OF the guns of our Commodore NJ.
c. Perry, and inspired by racial pride
that will not die, has compelled great,
hulking China to open up her vast and
| densely peopled realms to Western civili-
zation. Eighteen thousand miles of rail-
road already constructed in India are
pumping the product of 100000, 900 toilers
into the lap of the world, and the work of
railroad construction in that country is
only fairly begun. The great interior
desert of Australia, like that of America,
is vanishing before rapidly advancing
civilization, and now that the energies of
that Southern continent have been
diverted from spending money to acquir-
ing it. its contributions of foods and fibers
to the worlds supply will be enormous.
| Argentine is one.third as large as the
United States, India is half the size, Aus
! tralia falls but little short OF being as large
as our country, and Brazil quite equals it,
and Siberia is half larger, while the area
OF arabic land in Africa is untold. Ifthese
! peoples and countries were to be LETT to
their own resources for development, we
would have little to fear from their COM
petition, but they are not to be. The most
attractive fields for American and
European enterprise during the next
generation will be Asia and Africa, and
the business in hand will be the organizing
of their tireIess hordes into effective in
dustrialism and their equipment with all
the instruments of our industrial life. for
the Orient, like the tropics, Is to be de-
veloped by native labor under the superin-
tendence of Caucasian enterprise and
executive ability, and thus organized and
differed, the productive power of these
lands and laborers is beyond comprehen-
sion.
What does all this signify2 That the
American farmer, who, until recently, has
been the granary of the world, is to come
into relentless competition with the habit
able earth. The American and European
artisan will, in many WAYS, have to COM
pete with Asiatic cheap labor, and must
therefore have cheap bread. 1t is IDLE to
say that the power of these densely peo-
pied countries to consume will keep pace
with their power to produce, for do these
people, when they come to our country,
adopt our standard of living or maintain
their own? The wheat farmer of the Pun
iaub has already demoralized the prices of
American wheat in English markets, yet
he contents himself with rice and pulses
and seldom knows the taste of bread. The
balance of trade is always In midas favor,
and under British superintendent her
productive power has been tremendously
augmented. Why will it not be so with
| China? Industriaily the Mongols are not
an inferior people, for their logged per-
sistency counterbaiances our greater
virility, and if our workers cannot compete
with them upon our own ground, how can
they be successfully competed with on
| their own ground?
/ The home market is unquestionably the
more profitable market for the farmer, but
1t is not adequate to his requirements.
The capacity of the people to consume
does not require anything like the area of
land already under cultivation in this
country, and several generations will have
passed away before a balance will be