Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1911-07-05
q 80 80
AGRjcUlTURE'S INCREASING
IMPORTANCE.

IMPORTANCE.
Report says that the Statistical
Abstract for 1910, which the National
Government is getting out, will give
more space to the agricultural Sec
ton of the country than did any Of
it's predecessors. This is not surpris-
ing. Mining has made great gains
in the past three or four decades. A
far larger expansion, however. has
taken place in manufactures. While
the value of the products of the
country's farms for 1910 was about
100000, 900, the output Of the coun-
try's mills and factories was more
than $4,000 OO,oOO. 1t was $751;
0OO,OOO,O0O in 1907, but the panic of
the latter part of that year hit the
factories hard for fifteen or eighteen
months, and complete recovery by
them has not taken place yet
Agriculture was not injured nearly
so much as manufactures by the
financial setback of three and half,
years ago. While the population is
rapidly increasing the food produc-
ton is not keeping pace with it, This
accounts for the advance in prices
of most of the farm products. As
population must keep on growing a
time will soon come when the home
supply of wheat. corn, pork, beef and
other foods win be barely sufficient
for the home demand. Then we will
have to import some of it, as Great
Britain has been doing for more than
two-thirds of a century, although the
time is not likely to come in cen
turtles when we will have to import
such large proportion of our food
supply as England has been doing
in recent times. We see in our ia
bles of exports every year an evil
dence of the relative gain of manu-
features among us, as compared
with agriculture. Fifty years ago
agriculture furnished the bulk of our
merchandise exports. For the fiscal
year 1910 manufactures, in the aggre.
gate, caught up with farm products.
In few years manufactures will con-
tfibute much larger share than az
riculture of the total exports.
Here is an incentive for the far.
mer ia employ all his skill in his
calling. The home market, which is
the profitable market for his prod
ucts is increasing much faster than
are the products. There is limit
to the acreage of farm lands. That
limit has not yet been reached, but
it will be before many more de-
cades pass. Irrigation is beginning
to make the desert blossom, but a
country which increases it's popula-
ton by 100000 in a decade must
soon people all the new acres which
irrigation furnishes. As large pro-
portion of the newcomers drift into
the factories instead of going to the
farms, they increase the demand for
food faster than the supply grows.
The census of 1920 will see much
greater decnnial expansion in popu-
lation west of the Mississippi than
that of 1910 revealed. All the re.
sources of scientific cultivation of
the soil must be brought into requis-
ition by the American farmer if he
is to continue to supply the Ameri
can consumer without calling in out
side aid. The desert lands are be-
ing irrigated and the swamps are be-
ing drained. Thus hundreds of mil
lions of acres will be added to the
area susceptible to high cultivation.
But the gain from these sources will
have to be rapid if it is to keep pace
with the growth of consumption.
Nobody now alive will be likely to
see agriculture fall again to the low
estate into which it dropped in 1898
and for a few years afterward. Those
were the days when thousands of