the Panama Canal inviting to the markets of the world, with improved and improving railway facilities, and with no further competition with free lands nearer the centre of population the chief handicaps to agricultural development have been removed and a period of extraordinary progress should be setting in.
Recent progress more rapid. That this is true is apparently demonstrated by the census figures showing the increase in number of farms and in farm values between the years 1900 and 1901.-^ In 1900 Oregon had 35,837 farms averaging 281 acres in extent. These farms, with the buildings, machinery and domestic animals pertaining to them, are assigned an average value of $4,821 or a total farm wealth for the state of $172,761,287. Ten years later there are 45,502 farms, an increase of nearly 10,000; the average acreage is 256.8, a reduction of 24.2 acres. But the value of the average farm, fully equipped as before, has risen from $4,821 to $11,600, and the value of all farm property in the state has grown to the remarkable total of $528,243,782.
Even more striking is the case of Washington, where the number of farms increased from 33,202 in 1900 to 56,192 in 1 910, and their total value increased from $144,040,547 to $637,543,411. This represents an increase in the value of the average farm in Washington from $4,338 to $11,346 in ten years.
Idaho had 17,471 farms in 1900, and by the year
lAn analysis of those figures, and of the apparent prosperity of Agriculture, will be given at a later point in this chapter.
