seem like denying the rotation of the earth to dispute this proposition. Nothing that anyone can say will change this fact any more than the commands of Canute could change the rising of the tide.

More than this may be said. We are unworthy descendants of the fathers of this Republic if we do not advance beyond their knowledge and practice to correspond with economic evolution. They were progressives. They advanced beyond the knowledge and practice of their fathers. Shall we cease to be progressives and attempt to frame our policy upon conditions of George Washington's time?

Credit has already received attention from other speakers. It becomes a land utilization problem in newer sections of the country where settlement is being developed, and the credit policy must be somewhat different from that which is suitable for regions or established farming.

No matter how long interest rates may ultimately fall, and it is recognized that suitable credit machinery may help in bringing about the result, the interest level must ultimately be governed by the amount of capital and the demand for it. The issue of paper money and other similar schemes no matter how useful in certain political exigencies is but the beating of the tom-toms, as witness the results in Europe to-day. The continually recurring suggestion of the political charlatan that the interest rate may be lowered by putting the printing presses to work or otherwise inflating the currency, was sufficiently disproved by the experience of all countries during the recent war when the process of inflation resulted in continually mounting rates of interest. The slightest breath of suspicion, the very suggestion of repudiation or repayment in cheap money raises the rate of interest which farmers must pay.

A land policy must look toward the maintenance of peace in the world, not merely international peace but what is even more essential, peace at home. The prosperity of war is temporary and illusory. War spells poverty. Our land policies must have relation to world land policies and be of such a nature as to provide the nations of the world with food and raw materials.

In our own country there must be a proper proportion between agricultural production and the production of nonagricultural goods and services. This is fundamental in the establishment of a national land policy.

It is an elementary proposition in economies that we can not have absolute overproduction; in other words, we can not have too much production in general. The purpose of production is the satisfaction of human wants, and human wants know no limit. They expand with their satisfaction-" They grow by what they feed on." It has also been laid down as a general principle in economics that the satisfaction of any lower want creates a want of a higher order. We satisfy the animal man, then the intellectual, spiritual, aesthetic man demands his satisfactions.

To-day, as never before, we must emphasize the truth that man can not consume except as he produces. If we produce less beef we must consume less beef. This is as true as that two and two make four and not five, and that human beings, by and large, can not get something for nothing. The crying need now is for more production. To think that we can become generally more prosperous by reducing hours of labor below a proper normal length of the working day, and

by cutting down efficiency in production, is sheer insanity if it is not revolutionary bolshevism.

Now while this general elementary proposition in economics can not be stressed too strongly, it is just as true that we may have particular and special overproduction and generally this means disproportionate production. The problem to which attention is called as a land utilization problem is that of proper proportion in the different kinds of economic production. It is this which must be borne in mind if we are not to have a recurrence of agricultural distress. Never has enough food been produced to satisfy the hunger needs of all human beings, but there have been times when in parts of the world we have had a very serious disproportionate development of food production. Food has been produced at a loss and has frequently found no market. Wants have existed, but purchasing power has been lacking. There has been a lack of coordination and balance of economic forces.

Price fixing will never bring prosperity. No price can be mentioned which would make all the farmers prosperous. It is quite conceivable that with the price of wheat at $5 a bushel we should increase the number of those producing wheat at a loss. At the same time we would have a price which would spell poverty to the nonagricultural population.

Price fixing tends to stratification and to a stationary economic condition, and especially would this be the case if it took the form of price stabilization through the purchase of surpluses by government, apart from possible national bankruptcy. The tendency, if carried far, would be, to use a phrase of the late Theodore Roosevelt, "to China fy our country; but I do not like to use the word "Chinafy," because it does injustice to China. It would tend to prevent progress, which is dependent upon ready transfers of labor and capital from pursuit to pursuit, so that all of the productive forces may be best employed. If there is a permanent and general tendency in agriculture to give unduly small returns, it signifies investment of labor and capital in agriculture and those producing under unfavorable conditions should see other occupations.

Price stabilization is desirable in so far as it can be obtained through adjustment of production to demand, the full use of all obtainable information, and the better adjustment of marketing machinery.

All land policies must have as their aim general prosperity; otherwise they are doomed to failure. The farmer must have prosperity, which means prosperity for other economic groups in the country, and, indeed, in the world.

What we need is indicated in the formula of the three G's, namely, good farming by good men on good land. We must put land into its proper use; we must continue the efforts already begun, for which our State departments of agriculture, our agricultural colleges, and the splendid United States Department of Agriculture deserve our highest praise. We must do our best to lessen the number of submarginal men, and here reference is made merely to those measures which are agreed upon by substantially all eugenists, to lessen the number of the absolutely unfit, while at the same time we do our best to cultivate all human powers, ethical and spiritual, as well as economical.

THE TAXATION OF LAND.

The taxation of land is a large problem in itself and can be treated now and here only in the very broadest terms. At the meeting of the National Tax Association, held in Bretton Woods, N. H., last September, it was the general consensus of opinion that the burden of taxation resting on land was becoming excessive-in fact, confiscatory. Already we find places like Michigan where the burden of land is forcing it back into the hands of the State, and it is said. on reliable authority that in Ohio special assessments on farm land are absorbing all the value of the land and threatens to force many farmers into hopeless bankruptcy. At the same time we find agitation for the appropriation through taxation of all land values. It is, therefore, a fundamental problem in land utilization whether or not we shall retain private property in land. At least it is our opinion that private property is beneficial alike to society and the individual. We take the position that methods of taxation should receive careful attention to the end that the tax burden should become more and more widely diffused, just as the benefits of government are more and more widely diffused. Property, whether in the form of improvements or of land, should be taxed; otherwise this tax burden tends to become confiscatory.

Land settlement embraces a variety of problems in land utilization. We have discussed several of them already in treating these problems as to the proper proportion between agricultural production and the production of nonagricultural goods and services; the right proportion between the various requisites of production; the credit problem; and, in fact, all that has been presented has its bearings on land settlement. Among other problems the following are mentioned:

First. The political and social conditions which result from the quality of the settlers, because we want in the future landowning farmers who will resist new tyrannies as actively as our forefathers resisted old tyrannies.

Second. The adaptation of policy to the various elements comprising the population, to their relations, actual and prospective, with a clear understanding of the fact that these relations must be based on similarities and differences, past and present.

Third. Methods of attracting to agricultural land good agricultural labor and training it as a source of supply for land settlement. A fourth very serious problem is that of wise selection of land. It is in land selection that the settler most frequently makes his failure, and as this is a case where the purchaser (the settler) is unable, and necessarily unable, to judge of quality of the purchase which is to afford him a living and a home, he should be provided with adequate help by various social agencies, private and public. Nothing is more pitiful than cases of honest, hardworking settlers cheated out of their little homes by unscrupulous dealers. One case only-a man had a little home in Chicago and was induced to exchange it for a socalled farm, which consisted of worthless swamp land. He toiled in vain, his wife died, he went insane, and his children scattered. Would hanging be too good for this unscrupulous agent? In another case the settler went back to Chicago and became a bolshevik.

The fifth problem is that of land classification and withdrawal from settlement of unsuitable land.

The sixth problem is that presented by the high capitalization of land values.

The seventh problem is that of wise land planning and the closer settlement of the land.

RECLAMATION.

The reclamation of land plays a large rôle in land utilization. Others have discussed this problem. Here it is necessary only to emphasize merely the fact that reclamation applies to many different kinds of potentially good land, e. g., swamp lands, cut-over lands, irrigable lands, worn-out soils, etc. The policy of reclamation must be viewed as a national policy, and money must not be expended beyond prospective returns; otherwise capital is wasted. words, we must have proper balance between cost and return.

ADMINISTRATIVE AGENCIES.

In other

Given needed legislation, land utilization requires satisfactory administrative agencies. Let us remember that this problem, like all administrative problems, is only secondarily a legislative problem. It has already been suggested that we need land commissions, State and Federal, to help bring about good settlement. We need these agencies for other aspects of land utilization. The policies grow more complex as wealth and population increase. The administrative agencies are to guide, to direct, to enforce, to exercise various degrees of control. Laws establishing them must be broad in scope and of a kind to attract to this high service talent equal to any that the country affords, men who will regard their office as an opportunity to serve, putting their souls into the work.

TENANCY.

We do not know enough about tenancy to decide what is a normal amount of tenancy in an old, settled country. It may be 20 or it may be 30 per cent. Certainly it must vary with the racial composition of the population. We do know that there is much bad tenancy. We do know poor tenants account for a part of this bad tenancy. We do know that there is much good tenancy. We do know that tenancy is very frequently a rung on the agricultural ladder. We find in some places that tenancy is merely a method of transferring property from generation to generation-the tenants being sons, sons-in-law, etc. We find farms in which every tenant becomes a farm owner, or 100 per cent owner producing farms. We need more light and we need to help the more capable tenants to become farm owners; in some cases additional credit may be needed, but we have inadequate data. We do not want incapable men to become farm owners, and we do not want to encourage attempts to buy land with excessive grants of credit, leading only to ruin. To give a man 95 per cent of purchase price of land through public grants of credit would be disastrous to encourage men to gamble in futures.

Finally and lastly, we must emphasize the often-overlooked fact that a modern farm is a large enterprise worthy of our best brains. Our agriculture needs big men capable of big things. A great many in writing on agriculture seem to think of it as a small business for small men. They would so restrict the possibilities of land ownership that it would not attract the kind of farmers who helped to establish our independence and who framed our marvelous Constitution. In our early days our greatest statesmen lived on the land and were proud to be farmers. It was not necessary to legislate them into office. They were our natural, our voluntarily selected leaders. We think of men like Madison, Monroe, and Jefferson, and, above all, Washington. Our land policies, while giving every opportunity for capable young men to rise, must at the same time be of such a character as to keep up the breed of big men among our farmers.

A NATIONAL POLICY FOR AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH.

By Dr. RAYMOND A. PEARSON, of Iowa.

There should be a well-defined national policy in reference to agricultural research, because such research relates to questions of fundamental national importance, and the value of such research to the whole Nation has been proved; furthermore, agricultural problems affecting the national welfare are becoming more and more numerous and complex, and research must be enlarged to enable us to cope with them.

The policy should be to provide ample support for the investigation of problems relating to the decrease of cost of producing farm products and their more efficient distribution and marketing, the improvement of their quality, the conservation of soil fertility, and the betterment of rural life. The policy also should be to encourage cooperation of all public agencies engaged in agricultural research and to provide for proper provision-enough of each to produce the highest possible efficiency and not so much as to hamper efficiency. Sound arguments in plenty can be given to support these statements.

THE IMPORTANCE OF AGRICULTURE AS A FUNDAMENTAL INDUSTRY.

About 40 per cent of the population of our country is engaged in agriculture. There are nearly six and one-half million (6,448,386) farms, including nearly 1,000,000,000 (955,676,545) acres. Each farm is an independent unit, and the character of the homes on these farms has a profound influence on the character of our Nation.

The value of farm lands is estimated to be over $66,334,309,556. The value of implements and machinery is estimated to exceed $3,595,317,021. The estimated value of live stock is $7,996,362,496. The total of these great investments is $77,925,989,073.

The value of the annual production of our farms far exceeds that of any other industry. It is equivalent to the value of all manufactures over the costs of raw materials. The value of farm products exported from the United States has averaged $2,062,000,000