Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Current Economic Affairs (1924).pdf/91

Rh production for the replenishment of depleted stocks. Production may show a statistical increase at the expense of quality, as in 1917-18 when a good deal of slate was dug and sold as coal. An industrial depression, as in 1921, leads to a shrinkage of production. In agricultural production the benign or malign influences of the weather are explanations of great changes from year to year.

A good deal of the annual variation in agricultural production is ascribable to changes in the acreage cultivated. Thus, there was a maximum of 51,482,000 acres seeded to winter wheat in the fall of 1918. In the fall of 1921 the acreage was 47,611,000 and in the fall of 1922 it was 46,069,000. The total wheat area of the United States in 1923 is around 58,200,000 acres, compared with an average of 47,097,000 acres in the period 1909-13. The ability to cultivate such a greatly increased area may be ascribable to increased mechanicalization of farm work, by the use of tractors, automobiles, etc., but that may not be deduced with certainty. There is a good deal of elasticity in farm work, and in the ability of farm labor to do considerably more or less even with manual and animal work. But if increased mechanicalization has really played any important part in agriculture there is evidence indicating that it has not offset the effects of land impoverishment. In 1909 the average yield of wheat in the United States was 15.44 bu. per acre. In 1909 it was 12.93 bu. In three great wheat growing states—Minnesota and the two Dakotas—the average in 1919 was but little more than half that of 1909. Impoverishment of the land implies, of course, the obligation to do more work to make the same production.