Professor L. H. Bailey, a most industrious and accurate observer,
says: "Dr. Engel's argument rests on the assumption that
agriculture produces only or chiefly food; but probably more than
half of the agricultural products of the United States is not food.
It is cotton, flax, hemp, wool, hides, timber, tobacco, dyes, drugs,
flowers, ornamental trees and plants, horses, pets, and fancy stock,
and hundreds of other non-edible commodities. The total food produce
of the United States, according to the twelfth census, was
$1,837,000. The cost of material used in the three industries of
textile, lumber and leather manufactories alone was $1,851,000,000.
"Dr. Engel thinks that the outlay for subsistence diminishes as
income increases; but comforts and luxuries increase in intimate
ratio with the income, and the larger part of these come from the
farm and forest. Dr. Engel, in fact, allows this, for he says that
'sundries become greater as income increases."'
We have already abundance of information about almost every county
in the Union, published by Boards of Trade and land boomers, like
the following about "Oxnard, Ventura County, the center of the
famous lima bean district in California. For a year the returns from
farm products alone, in this vicinity, are estimated at over
$2,000,000. The sugar factory, which uses 2000 tons of beets every
twenty-four hours, requires the yield of about 1900 acres every
season. The beet crop is rotated with beans, and the factory's
supply is kept good by systematic methods. Two thousand head of
cattle are being fattened at the present time in the company's yard
on the beet pulp. Much of the pulp is also sold to local stockmen,
who value it highly for feed. The factory turns out 5000 bags of
sugar every day." And again:
"Eastern farm lands steadily declined in price up to about 1902, so
that Eastern land sold for less than Western land of the same
quality and of like situation; but the tide seems at last to have
turned, and much money is now being made in buying up cheap farms
and especially in sub-dividing them for small cultivators."
That sort of thing is interesting; but it is not what a man wants to
know--he is anxious to learn how much he can make and where and how
to do it.
The man who seeks a comfortable living will do better to rent on
long lease or buy a few acres convenient to trolley or railroad
communication with a city; besides the returns which will come to
the farmer from the use of a few acres, if he is the owner he will
get a constant increase in the value of the land, due to the growth
of the city. If the city grows out so that the land becomes too
valuable to farm, he will be well paid for leaving.
(Although progress is continually forcing laborers back upon less
desirable land, their loss, unless they are the owners, is the
landowner's gain.)
The amount of product to be grown for one's own use depends on the
size of the family and its fondness for vegetables.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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