that the smarter and more enterprising boys and girls have left them
for the towns, leaving behind the duller and more conservative to
the mercy of the railroads and other monopolies. What wonder, then,
that the overworked and struggling farmer finds little chance to
study, or to investigate and invest in fertilizers or even in modern
methods of agriculture.

No wonder farming does not pay if a "farmer" means a stupid man with
neither training for, nor knowledge of, his business. Those who have
the knowledge seldom have the experience and those who have the
experience seldom have the knowledge.

The bonanza farms of the West are other samples of great areas of
the most productive land in the United States being used most
unscientifically. By the methods used, the land produces less per
acre than land in the East which is not so good. Accordingly, we
find that the bonanza farm plan, where great areas of wheat are
worked by machines with labor employed only in the seed time and
harvest, is rapidly breaking up. As the land becomes valuable and is
taxed, such wasteful, wholesale methods do not pay as well as it
pays to rent or sell the land to farmers, who each for themselves
attend to details of the business. Consequently, most of those farms
are being sold off. The whole amount of wheat ever raised on them,
however, is small compared to the rice, millet, and wheat raised in
China, India, and Russia, and is insignificant compared to the
amount of produce grown on the myriad little farm plots.

A comparison of productions as taken from the 12th and 13th United
States Censuses in the bonanza farm states shows that the yield of
wheat was:

while New England shows 23.5 bu. per acre.

In 1899 In 1909

Minnesota 14.5 bu. per acre 17.4
North Dakota 13.5 bu. per acre 14.3
South Dakota 10.5 bu. per acre 14.6

By 1917 these largely increased, but the differences remain.

"The average extent of land tilled by one family in Japan does not
exceed one hectare" (2.471 acres), less than two and a half acres.
("Japan in the Beginning of the Twentieth Century," page 89.
Published by the Department of Agriculture and Commerce of Japan.)

"Farm households contain on an average 5.8 persons, of whom two and
a half persons per family may be regarded of an age capable of doing
effective work."

"So that here we have more than one person working on each acre and