_Recent decrease of land values._—In the United States during recent years there has been a decided shrinkage of land values in most of the country. Several evident causes appear worthy of mention. The most evident is a rapid increase of farms on the western plains, recently bringing their products into the competition. These prairie regions give the largest range for farming in the world. In the same connection is the introduction, upon these immense fields of cheap land, of extensive machinery by which the productive power of labor is multiplied. The labor of one man for 300 days is said to have produced in California 5,000 bushels of wheat, so that one man’s labor on many acres gives to each of 1,000 people a barrel of flour a year. Next to this is the opening of new agricultural enterprises in South America, Australia, India and South Africa, with still greater prospects in Siberia—all the result of great improvements in transportation, opening to these regions the world’s great markets. This has pushed the supply of staple products toward the condition of over-production. The same cause has diminished the demand for our staples by greatly stimulating the consumption of foreign fruits and nuts. Most recently has come the depression from loss of confidence in enterprise, through excessive speculation and waste of capital, undermining the market for land as well as for all the machinery of production. In these conditions the whole world has shared. _Population drifting to cities._—The drift of farm population toward the cities is a symptom of the changed conditions, not a cause. If, as decided by an expert investigator, three men on a farm do the work that fourteen did forty years ago, the farms can well spare to the cities an increasing number of its boys and girls. The drift is real and permanent, diminishing rural population in 100 years from 96 per cent of the whole to 70 per cent, though exaggerated in figures through arbitrary division between towns and cities. This movement has been noticed the world over since 1848, when machinery began to affect agricultural production. That this drift is wholesome is evident, if we look at the diversity of employment resulting and the improved welfare of all. A simple comparison of figures from the United States census will show the readjustment of employment. No one can doubt the advantage gained in the entire nation.