decreased from 196,000,000 to 49,000,000 bushels, in order to help
feed the increase of 21 per cent in our population. And yet the
people complained of the high cost of plain living and many have
been forced to adopt lower standards for the table. Meanwhile the
value of the farm land in the United States increased by 118 per cent
during the ten years--from $13,000,000,000 to $28,500,000,000--as
reported by the Bureau of Census.

The Value of Land

The great primary reason why land values have increased so markedly
during the last thirty years is that America has no more free land
of good quality in humid sections. Civilized man is characterized by
hunger for the ownership of land. Our population continues to
increase by more than 20 per cent each decade, but all future
possible additions to the farm lands of the United States amount to
only 9 per cent of the present acreage, and most of this small
addition requires expensive irrigation or drainage.

If it cost $4 an acre to raise corn, 5 cents a bushel to harvest and
market the crop, 9 cents a bushel to maintain the fertility of the
soil, and 1/2 per cent on the value of the land for taxes, then, if
money is worth 5 per cent, land that produces 20 bushels of 40-cent
corn is worth $21.81 an acre. On the same basis, what would land be
worth that produces 40 bushels of corn and equivalent values of
other crops? At first thought one might say, $43.62; but this answer
would be far from the correct one, which is $116.36.

And, if we again double the yield, making it 80 bushels an acre, the
value of the land becomes not $87.24, and not $232.72; but easy