The force of “American competition” is thus not in the possibility of having hundreds of acres of wheat in one block. It lies in the ownership of the land, in a system of culture which is appropriate to the character of the country, in a widely developed spirit of association, and, finally, in a number of institutions and customs intended to lift the agriculturist and his profession to a high level which is unknown in Europe.
In Europe we do not realise at all what is done in the States and Canada in the interests of agriculture. In every American State, and in every distinct region of Canada, there is an experimental farm, and all the work of preliminary experiment upon new varieties of wheat, oats, barley, fodder and fruit, which the farmer has mostly to make himself in Europe, is made under the best scientific conditions at the experimental farms, on a small scale first and on a large scale next. The results of all these researches and experiments are not merely rendered accessible to the farmer who would like to know them, but they are brought to his knowledge, and, so to speak, are forced upon his attention by every possible means. The “Bulletins” of the experimental stations are distributed in hundreds of thousands of copies; visits to the farms are organised in such a way that thousands of farmers should inspect the stations every year, and be shown by specialists the results obtained, either with new varieties of plants or under various new methods of treatment. Correspondence is carried on with the farmers on such a scale that, for instance, at Ottawa, the experimental farm sends out every year a hundred thousand letters and packets. Every farmer can get, free of charge and postage, five pounds of seed of any variety of cereals, out of which he can get next year the necessary seed for sowing several acres. And, finally, in every small and remote township there are held farmers’ meetings, at which special lecturers, who are sent out by the experimental farms or the local agricultural societies, discuss with the farmers in an informal way the results of last year’s experiments and discoveries relative to every branch of agriculture, horticulture, cattle-breeding, dairying and agricultural co-operation.[69]
American agriculture really offers an imposing sight—not in the wheat fields of the Far West, which soon will become a thing of the past, but in the development of rational agriculture and the forces which promote it. Read the description of an agricultural exhibition, “the State’s fair,” in some small town of Iowa, with its 70,000 farmers camping with their families in tents during the fair’s week, studying, learning, buying, and selling, and enjoying life. You see a national fête, and you feel that you deal with a nation in which agriculture is in respect. Or read the publications of the scores of experimental stations, whose reports are distributed broadcast over the country, and are read by the farmers and discussed at countless “farmers’ meetings.” Consult the “Transactions” and “Bulletins” of the countless agricultural societies, not royal but popular; study the grand enterprises for irrigation; and you will feel that American agriculture is a real force, imbued with life, which no longer fears mammoth farms, and needs not to cry like a child for protection.
“Intensive” agriculture and gardening are already by this time as much a feature of the treatment of the soil in America as they are in Belgium. As far back as the year 1880, nine States, among which were Georgia, Virginia and the two Carolinas, bought £5,750,000 worth of artificial manure; and we are told that by this time the use of artificial manure has immensely spread towards the West. In Iowa, where mammoth farms used to exist twenty years ago, sown grass is already in use, and it is highly recommended by both the Iowa Agricultural Institute and the numerous local agricultural papers; while at the agricultural competitions the highest rewards are given, not for extensive farming, but for high crops on small areas. Thus, at a recent competition in which hundreds of farmers took part, the first ten prizes were awarded to ten farmers who had grown, on three acres each, from 262 to 346¾ bushels of Indian corn, in other words from 87 to 115 bushels to the acre. This shows where the ambition of the Iowa farmer goes. In Minnesota, prizes were given already for crops of 300 to 1,120 bushels of potatoes to the acre—that is, from eight and a quarter to thirty-one tons to the acre—while the average potato crop in Great Britain is only six tons.
At the same time market-gardening is immensely extending in America. In the market-gardens of Florida we see such crops as 445 to 600 bushels of onions per acre, 400 bushels of tomatoes, 700 bushels of sweet potatoes, which testify to a high development of culture. As to the “truck farms” (market-gardening for export by steamer and rail), they covered, in 1892, 400,000 acres, and the fruit farms in the suburbs of Norfolk, in Virginia, were described by Prof. Ch. Baltet[70] as real models of that sort of culture—a very high testimony in the mouth of a French gardener who himself comes from the model marais of Troyes.
And while people in London continue to pay almost all the year round twopence for a lettuce (very often imported from Paris), they have at Chicago and Boston those unique establishments in the world where lettuces are grown in immense greenhouses with the aid of electric light; and we must not forget that although the discovery of “electric” growth is European (it is due to Siemens), it was at the Cornell University that it was proved by a series of experiments that electric light is an admirable aid for forwarding the growth of the green parts of the plant.
In short, America, which formerly took the lead in bringing “extensive” agriculture to perfection, now takes the lead in “intensive,” or forced, agriculture as well. In this adaptability lies the real force of American competition.
FOOTNOTES:
[34] I leave these lines on purpose as they were written for the first edition of this book.
[35] Twenty-three per cent. of the total area of England, 40 per cent. in Wales, and 75 per cent. in Scotland are now under wood, coppice, mountain heath, water, etc. The remainder—that is, 32,777,513 acres—which were under culture and permanent pasture in the year 1890 (only 32,094,658 in 1911), may be taken as the “cultivable” area of Great Britain.