Page:The truth about the railroads (IA truthaboutrailro00elli).pdf/169

Rh clearly the story that our own people are drawing more heavily each year on our farms for their food-supply.

Secretary Wilson of the Department of Agriculture takes the view expressed recently by President Taft, that farm production will keep pace with the country’s necessities, yet it is very apparent, from the shrinking areas of land available and not in farms and from the rising prices of farm-lands due to greater demand for them with the increase of population, that the people of the United States are beginning to catch up with the immense annual farm production, and that in the future, with less raw and very productive land coming in, there must be increasing production, or the people will not be as well fed or as cheaply fed as they have been.

In 1800 only 4 per cent of the people lived in cities of 8000 or more, while in 1910 the proportion was about 40 per cent. In 1840, 77.5 per cent of all at work were engaged in agriculture, and in 1900 but 35.7 per cent. Should the next decade demonstrate that the Rh