d by people of sturdy
Germanic and Norse extraction. In New England the Poles, French,
Portuguese and some Jews are settling in the country. But throughout the
states of the Union as a whole the population, both the newcomers and
older stock, are American.

The dates of this exploitation of land are, generally, from 1890 onward.
Reference is made elsewhere to the description of this process in the
Middle West.[31]

Independent of these causes the same process has appeared in the South,
in Georgia, Mississippi and in West Tennessee, as well as other states.
In sections in which the values of land have not been doubled, as in
Illinois and in Indiana they have, the same exodus from the farm and
invasion of the country community by new people has taken place.

One cause of this exploitation of land is the shrinkage in size of the
older families. Everywhere the exploitation of land is the greatest
where the soil is the richest and the farmers the most prosperous. Even
in the exceptional populations such as the Scotch Presbyterians and
Pennsylvania Germans, this effect of agricultural prosperity is slowly
at work.

In Chester County, Pennsylvania, and in Washington County, where the
most substantial farmers in the country are found, the families in the
present generation are small. Many of the older stock have no children.
Families which have retained the title of their land for eight
generations are losing their hold upon the soil, by the fact that they
have none to inherit after them.

Another cause of this exploitation of land is the increasing number of
small farms in certain regions. This means that in certain sections the
farming population has a new element, for the holders of these small
farms are many of them new to the community.

The process, which is made clear by the census of 1910, is this. The
earlier retirement from the farms was by sale, the farmer taking money
instead of land. The second stage of retirement from the farm was
through absentee landlordism and the placing of tenants on the farm.
This process has come to an end in many sections of the Middle West,
with the return of the sons of the landlord to the family acres in the
country, so that there is a sort of rhythm in the flow of population
from the country into the town and backward to the land. In this process
there is no invasion by new people, except the temporary residence of
the tenant farmer in the country, and some of these have in the