Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/581

Rh Indians, as they are called in our country, to the present system of intensive agriculture in a period of less than two generations? I venture to indicate freedom of restriction in custom or law in the purchase and sale and mortgaging of lands as the basis of this great change. The underlying principle, now being rapidly developed, is the gradual change from working land as a mine, subject to exhaustion, and using it as a tool or instrument of production, responding in its product to

 Total area of the United States, omitting Alaska, a fraction under 3,000,000 square miles. Area under cultivation in maize, wheat and oats in 1900, 234,(154 square miles, or a fraction under eight per cent, of the area of land and inland waters. The latter should be included in the food-producing area.

the measure of mental energy and mechanical aptitude applied to its use. These factors are generated in the free common schools now being supplemented by the addition of manual training schools in all the principal towns and cities.

Dealing in a broad and general way, all are aware that the titles to the vaster portion of the land in these States are derived from the government, mainly since the lay-out of land in sections of six hundred and forty (640) acres each, and quarter sections of one hundred and sixty (160) acres. This land has been disposed of in various ways—to railroad companies as bounties to aid in the construction of railways, and to individual purchasers and settlers under various laws. The