[Footnote 16: See above, sec. 7; also ch. 21, sec. 9.]
[Footnote 17: See above, sec. 2, note; also Vol. I, p. 422.]
[Footnote 18: See Vol. I, p, 412, on war and the pressure of population.]
PART VI
PROBLEMS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION
CHAPTER 25
AGRICULTURAL AND RURAL POPULATION
§ 1. Agriculture and farms in the United States. § 2. Rural and agricultural. § 3. Lack of a social agricultural policy in America. § 4. Period of decaying agricultural prosperity. § 5. Sociological effects of agricultural decay. § 6. Fewer, relatively, occupied in agriculture; use of machinery. § 7. Transfer of work from farm to factory. § 8. The rural exodus. § 9. The farmer's income in monetary terms. § 10. Compensations of the farmer's life. § 11. Ownership and tenancy.
§ 1. #Agriculture and farms in the United States#. There were nearly 12,400,000 persons in the United States gainfully occupied in agriculture in 1910, this being 32.5 per cent of all in occupations. These, together with other family members not reported as engaged in gainful occupations, constitute the agricultural population, and comprize more than one third of the total population of the country. "Agriculture" is here used in a broad sense, including floriculture, animal husbandry (poultry, bee culture, stock raising), regular fishing and oystering, forestry and lumbering. Agriculture thus produces not only the food but (excepting minerals, including coal, stone, natural gas, and oil) the raw or partly finished materials for all the manufacturing and mechanical industries.
With the exception of areas devoted to forestry on a large scale and to fishing, the industry of agriculture is pursued on the 6,400,000 farms, covering 46 per cent of the total land area of the country. Of the land in farms, a little over half is classified as improved. The estimated value of farm property, including buildings, implements, machinery, and live stock, was, in 1910, about $41,000,000,000, somewhere near one fourth of the estimated wealth of the country at that date.[1]