hich about half was tilled and the rest was
in permanent pasture and woodland. The fields were small and were laid
out irregularly, which was no disadvantage for hand cultivation. But
for the most economic use of land in field crops and under more modern
conditions it is necessary to have pretty level fields, of regular
rectangular shape. The farm unit should be of such extent as to permit
of the proper use of the soil by rotation of crops, and to employ
fully the best modern labor-saving machinery for each purpose.
Numerous recent agricultural surveys point to the conclusion that for
general farming this unit is a comparatively large area of about 300
acres.

These conditions offer a reward to those agricultural enterprisers
who can purchase lands at a price based upon the high costs and lower
yields of the older methods and cultivate them at the lower costs and
with the larger yields of the newer methods. This movement, therefore,
toward the consolidation of smaller into larger farms is likely to
continue in many communities for several decades. This is likewise
an advantage to the community in increasing the production with less
labor. But the net effect upon the social life of the countryside is
more doubtful, and calls for careful consideration.

Sec. 3. #Self-sufficing versus commercial farming. The typical American
farming family once produced nearly everything it used, and used
nearly everything it produced. It was very nearly a self-sufficing
economic unit, "a closed economy," as it sometimes called. Food,
clothing, fuel, lumber, houses, furniture, tools, were on the farm
carried through the various processes from the first gathering of the
raw materials to the finished product. They were then consumed by the
farm household. It is true that even in the first settlements there
were some craftsmen, cobblers, millers, weavers, blacksmiths--whose
services and wares were got by trading some of the surplus products
from the farms--butter, cheese, eggs, wool, hides, furs, live stock,
grain lumber. A few rare commodities of foreign make found their way
to the farm through peddlers and merchants; but altogether the goods
produced outside the farm were a small fraction of the family's
consumption, and were exchanged for but little of the farm's
production. Most farmers tried to produce for themselves, as far as
possible, everything their families needed, when the soil and
situation were poorly suited to the purposes. T