employed in the
investigations and their publications cover practically the whole range of
the science and art of agriculture. About five hundred separate bulletins
are issued each year, which may be obtained free on application.

This great chain of experiment stations is working wonders. In cooperation
with the agricultural colleges and the U. S. Department of Agriculture,
they are raising agriculture to scientific levels. They are, by their
laboratory work, doing the farmer's experimenting for him and doing it
better and with greater certainty. Thus they are eliminating much of the
uncertainty and "luck" from farming which has been its curse and
discouragement. And thus they are equipping the farmer to cope more
effectively with the difficulties of nature and to put a more confident
fight with stubborn climate and fickle weather, because he knows the
scientific points of the game.

II. Some Special Aspects of Scientific Agriculture.

_Intensive Farming and Conservation of Fertility_

The opening of the rich prairie lands to cultivation, with the marvels of
extensive agriculture, is a wonderful story. Our last chapter suggested it
in outline. But _intensive_ farming has its own triumphs, though they may
be less spectacular. There is something that wins our respect in the
careful, thorough methods of European agriculture, by which whole nations
are able to make a living on tiny farms by intensive farming. Tilling
every little scrap of ground, even roadside and dooryard, and guarding the
soil fertility as the precious business capital of the family, it is
wonderful how few square rods can be made to sustain a large family.

Frugality is not attractive to Americans, especially the European type
which often means peasant farming, and a low scale of living. We are
discovering, however, the vast possibilities of farm economy and intensive
cultivation. Professor Carver says, "Where land is cheap and labor dear,
wasteful and extensive farming is natural, and it is useless to preach
against it.... We always tend to waste that which is cheap and economize
that which is dear. The condition of this country in all the preceding
periods dictated the wasteful use of land and the economic use of labor,
as shown by the unprecedented development of agricultural machinery. But
as land becomes dearer, relatively to labor, as it inevitably will, the
tendency will be equally inevitable toward more intensive agriculture,
that is, tow