Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/130

120 place. Iowa has 37,000 more farms than all the New England states combined. While the West has not quite half the improved acreage of the country, it has 63 per cent of the unimproved acreage or 269,000,000 acres out of 426,400,000 acres. Farms average in size from 93.1 acres in Arkansas to 885.9 acres in Montana, 1,174.7 acres in Nevada, and 1,333 acres in Wyoming, where stock raising predominates and requires large ranges. The average for the West is 229.1 acres against 146.6 acres for the Union.

The proportion of the total land area in farms ranges from 3.7 per cent in Nevada to 97.4 per cent in Iowa. Kansas has 79.7, Missouri 77.3, Texas 74.9, Oklahoma 63, Nebraska 60.8, and Minnesota 51.8. No other State has 50 per cent. In the Rocky Mountains and Pacific states the average, considering the capabilities of the soil, is surprisingly low. California reports 28.9, Washington 19.9, Oregon 16.6, Wyoming 13, Montana 12.7, Utah 7.8, and Idaho 5.9. Iowa leads the Nation in this respect, followed by Indiana with 94.1, Ohio with 93.9, and Illinois with 91.5. It is from these four states, whose areas are so largely taken up and whose land values are high, that the extreme West is seeking by reason of its cheap lands and equable climate, to draw its new population. East of the Mississippi River the percentage ranges in New England from 32.9 in Maine to 80.8 in Vermont. Along the Atlantic coast the average is from 59 per cent in New Jersey to 85 per cent in Delaware. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois have already been shown in comparison with Iowa. Kentucky has 85.9, Tennessee 76.1, Wisconsin 57, and Michigan 47.8. Florida with 12.6 and the District of Columbia with 22.1 are the only percentages reported from east of the Mississippi River, that look like western figures. Values follow: