With older and poorer soil, denser population and primitive tools, the European farmer has distanced the American in nearly every crop. The average yield of potatoes in the United States is eighty bushels per acre; Belgium's yield is two hundred twenty-six bushels; France, one hundred ninety-six bushels per acre. Our average wheat crop is about fourteen bushels per acre. Scotland averages fortythree bushels per acre on poor, rocky soil. Belgium averages over thirty-eight bushels, and Germany twenty-nine bushels, on soil which has been cultivated for centuries, while ours is practically new. Our average for wheat, oats, rye, and barley is lower now than the lowest was for Belgium and Germany twenty-five years ago, since which they have advanced. Germany thru scientific agriculture, has since then increased the production of her six principal crops thirty-six percent. Land values throughout Western Europe have more than doubled in almost every country. No doubt but that a great deal of the difference in production per acre of the several crops is due to more intensive farming in Europe and more extensive farming in the United States, nevertheless no small amont of credit is due Itinerant Instruction. AMERICA Coming to America we find conditions much different than in Europe. The soil is comparatively new; the population is less dense; the country is more progressive; the inhabitants are eager to profit by the experience of others and at the same time use enough initiative to be classed as leaders and not as followers. America saw that practically every country in Western Europe was forced into solving the agricultural problem; that after being compelled to action good results followed, tho had itinerant instruction been introduced a century earlier, Europe would have been much more efficient in feeding its people. Seeing the transition in Europe and the remedy used in bringing it about, America is working along similar lines and beginning before an economic crisis confronts her. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." The South That labor was mainly compulsory and performed by another race caused an economic error to creep into the civilization of the South at an early period. This lowered the dignity of labor, and was a barrier to free labor and an ob |