cent. while the total farm area
increased only 4.8 per cent.[6] While 16,000,000 {177} people were
added to the population the increase in farm area was equal only to
what would accommodate an additional three and a half million people.
It is no longer easy to stretch the farm area and to a large extent our
farms must grow by the increase of the improved at the expense of the
unimproved acres.[7]

Actually the per capita agricultural production in 1909 (the year
covered by the census of 1910) was less than that of a decade before.
Though the crops in the latter year were far higher in value, the
increase in the quantity of product was only 10 per cent., as compared
with an increase in population of 21 per cent.[8] Had the American
people consumed all the American product in both years, they would have
been obliged to cut down their ration by about one-tenth;[9] instead
there was a vast diminution of exports. The growing population began
to consume the agricultural products formerly exported. The question
is therefore pertinent whether it will be possible for us indefinitely
to feed from our own fields our increasing millions or whether we shall
be forced to depend increasingly for food on outside sources and to
secure this food by a development of our export trade in manufactured
products. To many this question will seem to answer itself. It is
commonly assumed that there are almost no limits to {178} our possible
agricultural production and therefore to our desirable increase of
population. France is almost self-sufficing with a population of 189.5
to the square mile; when the United States (continental area) has an
equally dense population we may maintain a population of five or six
hundred millions. We need merely take up new lands and cultivate more
intensively.

The opportunities for the further development of American agriculture,
however, while undoubtedly great, are not immeasurable. At present we
have some 879,000,000 acres in farms, of which 478,000,000 (or 25.1 per
cent. of our total land area) are improved.[10] But of the rest of our
area much is not useful. Some 465,000,000 acres in the western part of
the country have an annual precipitation of fifteen inches or less, and
of these acres, not over 30,000,000 could be profitably irrigated at
present prices of farm products, labour, land and capital. This
addition of 30,000,000 acres would increase our present improved area
by less than seven p