f flour a year. Next to this is the opening of new
agricultural enterprises in South America, Australia, India and South
Africa, with still greater prospects in Siberia--all the result of great
improvements in transportation, opening to these regions the world's great
markets. This has pushed the supply of staple products toward the
condition of over-production. The same cause has diminished the demand for
our staples by greatly stimulating the consumption of foreign fruits and
nuts. Most recently has come the depression from loss of confidence in
enterprise, through excessive speculation and waste of capital,
undermining the market for land as well as for all the machinery of
production. In these conditions the whole world has shared.

_Population drifting to cities._--The drift of farm population toward the
cities is a symptom of the changed conditions, not a cause. If, as decided
by an expert investigator, three men on a farm do the work that fourteen
did forty years ago, the farms can well spare to the cities an increasing
number of its boys and girls. The drift is real and permanent, diminishing
rural population in 100 years from 96 per cent of the whole to 70 per
cent, though exaggerated in figures through arbitrary division between
towns and cities. This movement has been noticed the world over since
1848, when machinery began to affect agricultural production.

That this drift is wholesome is evident, if we look at the diversity of
employment resulting and the improved welfare of all. A simple comparison
of figures from the United States census will show the readjustment of
employment. No one can doubt the advantage gained in the entire nation.

_Abandoned farms._--The most disturbing feature of this readjustment is the
desertion of some farms in the rougher parts of New England and the drier
parts of the West. These lands will find a profitable use in the woodlots
through the East, and in grazing ranges through the West, with slight
permanent loss. They are not signs of poverty, but of a developing thrift,
just as the abandoned country woolen mills tell the story of immense
growth in the factory methods. While individuals seeking profit in sale or
rent of their farms may suffer in any such shrinkage of local values, it
must not be forgotten that the total of rural welfare is not necessarily
diminished. Land values, aside from improvements, are everywhere evidence
of limitations to welfare in some special direct