new farming came into use without the friction that developed in Europe where the lands were long settled and where there were well defined classes of landlords, tenants and laborers with strongly developed class psychologies and ancient prejudices.
We have already discussed the history of agriculture in this country and have fairly well traced the advance of the machines in the transformation of the art, but it is now necessary to invade the realm of dry figures and show the concrete result of machine farming in the direction of increased production which, of course, is the true test of utility and beneficence.
The Federal census of 1840 was the first to take any account of agricultural production and, as the machine age was in its infancy at that time (none of the machines having been adopted to the extent that they materially affected the total of production), we may very justly use the figures of that census as the basis of our comparisons.
The following tables have been made as brief as clearness will allow and will repay a careful study. Round numbers and percentages are given rather than burden the reader with the niceties of the statisticians. The ten year periods are used as being ample for comparison. The 1919 figures are approximations, and all figures refer to the United States proper.
See Page 62 (Table A).
Table A comprises the working farm population with the total population by ten year periods from 1840 to 1919. During these 79 years the working farmers decreased from 20 per cent to 13 per cent of the total population, a relative decrease of 35 per
