THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY SATURDAY, JULY 5, 1908. FARMING IN AMERICA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9133, 4 July 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY SATURDAY, JULY 5, 1908. FARMING IN AMERICA.

Writing in the "American Review of Reviews" Mr Casson gives some interesting facts relating to the agricultural development of the United States. The foundation of all American prosperity is the American farm, and the American farmer as he is to-day is a new product of civilisation, Formerly I he worked to live; now he runs the land as a great factory. The old hand-to-mouth agriculturist is giving place to a highlyeducated scientific captain of industry and master of machines. Mr Casson says that the beginning of the new Pactolian era in the United States dates from the year 1897. A bad harvest in Europe coincided with a good crop in America, and the price of wheat went up to about a dollar a bushel. The result was that in that year the other nations of the world paid the United States 240 millions sterling for farm products, and this unparalleled impouring of foreign money made the* United States the richest and busiest nation •in the world. The work-clay average value of the American crop is nearly £5,000,000 sterling. The enormous increase in the value of land is strikingly illustrated b/ what Mr Casson says about the State of lowa, which he regards as the most prosperous of

all the agricultural States. He says: —"When the Indians sold lowa to Uncle Sam they got about eight cents an acre. To give the price exactly, to a cent, it was £575,000. When this money was paid there were statesmen who protested that it was too much. Yet this amount was less than one quarter of the value of the eggs in last year's nests. Every three months the lowa hen pays for lowa." This immense agricultural development has been stimulated by a great advance in agricultural education. "There are now 15,000 new farmers who have graduated from agricultural colleges; and since the late Prof. W. O. Atwater opened the first American experiment station, in 1875, fifty others have sprung into vigorous life. There is also at Washington an Agricultural Department, which has become the greatest aggregation of farm scientists in the world. To maintain this department. Uncle Sam pays grudgingly £2,200,000 a year." That education pays, Mr Casson illustrates by mentioning the fact that a single professor in lowa College by his experiments discovered an improved seed which increased the yield by ten bushels an acre. Roughly speaking, the time needed to handle an acre of wheat has been reduced from sixtyone hours to three by the use of machinery. Hay now requires four hours, instead of twenty-one; oats seven hours, instead of sixty-six'; and. potatoes thirty-eight hours, instead of 109.