ds. In the old scientific
phrases the two forces that make the new farmer are the "struggle for
life" and "environment," or, to use other words, competition and
opportunity.

Competition has pressed severely upon the farmer, competition at home
and competition from other countries. At one time the heart of the
wheat-growing industry of this country was near Rochester, N. Y., in the
Genesee Valley; but the canal and the railway soon made possible the
occupation of the great granary of the west. A multitude of ambitious
young men soon took possession of that granary, and the flour-mills were
moved from Rochester to Minneapolis. This is an old story, but the same
forces are still at work. There has been developed a world-market. The
sheep of the Australian bush have become competitors of the flocks that
feed upon the green Vermont mountains and the Ohio hills. The plains of
Argentina grow wheat for London. Russia, Siberia, and India pour a
constant stream of golden grain into the industrial centers of Western
Europe, and the price of American wheat is fixed in London. These forces
have produced still another kind of competition; namely, specialization
among farmers. Localities particularly adapted to special crops are
becoming centers where skill and intelligence bring the industry to its
height. The truck-farming of the South Atlantic region, the fruit
growing of western Michigan, the butter factories of Wisconsin and
Minnesota, have crowded almost to suffocation the small market-gardener
of the northern town, the man with a dozen peach trees, and the farmer
who keeps two cows and trades the surplus butter for calico. These
things have absolutely forced progress upon the farmer. It is indeed a
"struggle for life." Out of it comes the "survival of the fittest," and
the fittest is the new farmer.

But along with competition has come opportunity. Indeed, out of these
very facts that have made competition so strenuous spring the most
marvelous opportunities for the progressive farmer. Specialization
brings out the best that there is in the locality and the man. It gives
a chance to apply science to farming. Our transportation system permits
the peach growers of Grand Rapids to place their crops at a profit in
the markets of Buffalo and Pittsburg; the rich orchards and vineyards of
Southern California find their chief outlet in the cities of the
manufacturing Northeast--three thousand miles away. During the forty
years, from