FARM AND DAIRY

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 127, 7 September 1910, Page 3

FARM AND DAIRY

ABANDONED FARMS IN UNITED . STATES. The idea prevails in some quarters that, while approaching the end of free land in the West, the area of abandoned farms will be forever past in the United States. Nothing could be more erroneous, writes Agnes C. Laut in Collier's Weekly. There never were more abandoned farms in the history of the United States than there are to-day. There never was a period in the history of the world—not exceeding times of war and famine —when such uniformly high prices rules for farm products, when the world demand was so uniformly greater than the world supply; and there never has been £8 period—as far as the United States is concerned—when there were so many abandoned farms, when there existed such a uniform deterioration in farm values, such a uniform and persistant movement away from the land to the' tawn.f:in the sections of the country kn&wn fls the abandoned farm areas. ■" ■' ? ' Take the United 'State's as a whole—on the Ist of January, 1-909, according to special returns gathered > by' the Conservation Commission, there were 16,000 square miles of abandoned farms chiefly in New England, New' York,"the Southeast, and the Middle Central ■ States. That is, there are in the United States at present 10,000,000 -a-cres- -of■> abandoned farms—an area the same as "all' that part of the Canadian North-w"est that- is cultivated, fifteen times-, therfsiftr of. Rhode Island, four times fches «fee- .of- Connecticut, twice the size 'oft' Massachusetts, twice the size of New -Jfersey;:;Averaging up all the farms'ofr-fchetUiiited- States the size per farm- is MG a'cres;so-that there are enough abandoned'farms to set up 70,000 farmetsv- Doesn't ldok-frery much as if the abandoned farms were decreasing, does it, tho'fliajh »ne" hears general rumors to thatf effect-constantly? Take the abandoned- farm areas by sections—in New* Y6sflc Sta'te between 1890 and 1900 more-tharf-14,000 farms were abandoned, mqre_than 400,000 people left thee ountry for the city; twenty agricultural districts showed a decrease in the population. If New York land were worked to its full capacity it would support a population equal to France, between thirty and forty million people. As matters stand, the population is over 7,000,000; but 5,000,000 of these are city people, who draw their sustenance from other States. Practically, only a little over 2,000.000 are drawing their support directly from the soil. The same story could be told of all New England, with the exception of parts of Maine and Massachusetts. The funny man's description of "crops of moss from New York, summer boarders for New Hampshire, summer swells for Massachusetts, and commuters from New Jersey," is, of course, an exaggeration; but it is an exaggeration that has a lot of truth in it.

Reports to hand from various parts of the Masterton district' indicate that there has been a considerable dimunii tioii in the number of rabbits during the last few months, as a result of systematic poisoning. At the annual meeting of the T. L. Joll Dairy Co. the average test of the Rivcrdale .Co. was referred to aa 3.722. The secretary of the latter company points out that these were the figures while thev made cheese. While they made ibutter the test was 4.289, so that the average for the whole season works out at 3.802. "The luckiest invention in history," «ii<l r uatent official to a reporter of the New York Express, "was that of 'barbed wire. Tt came about by accident. Isaac L. Ellwood -was the inventor of barbed wire. In his youth he lived in De Kalb, Illinois, and, having: a neighbor whose pigs trespassed on his garden, he put up one dav a wire fence of his own make. This fence had barbs and points on it; it to* queer and ugly, but it kept out the pigs. It waa a real barbed-wire fence, the first in the world, and there was millions of money in it, but young Ellwood and his friends laughed at its freak appearance. One day two strangers siw the fence, perceived how well it kept, out pigs, realised how cheap it was, realised in a word its value, and ordered several tons of it from Ellwood. Furthermore -tpiey contracted to sell for' a term of years all the barbed wire he could produce. Ellwood borrowed 1000 dols and set up a little factory. A few years later on he had paid back that loan, and was worth a small matter of 15j000,000dols. besides. ~ .