passed and the inefficiency and waste of the old farming must go with them. The avenue of escape from wage labor was being definitely closed, the era of tenantry and wage farming was coming in—an era of dear land and cheap labor—and it began to pay better to raise 100 bushels of corn on an acre than to raise 100 bushels on four acres, as had been done before.
The higher land becomes and the cheaper labor becomes in relation to it, the more intense will the cultural methods become. In other words, the farmer will adopt the method that gives the best returns on the sum of the interest, maintenance and labor charges.
The demand for better agricultural methods was met by the Experiment Stations and the demand for more land was met with great schemes for irrigation and drainage. The Carey Irrigation Act was passed in 1894, granting arid lands to the states for irrigation development purposes.
This was followed in 1902 by the National Reclamation Act, under which the greatest of the irrigation projects have been constructed. Fifteen million acres were granted to the states under the Carey Act, and more than 2,000,000 acres reclaimed under the Act of 1902.
In the East the various states along the Atlantic seaboard took up the matter of the drainage of the great succession of swamps and marshes that extend from New Jersey to the Everglades of Florida and contain about 80,000,000 acres of land. Untouched they were not only valueless but disease breeding—the home of malaria and the yellow fever spreading mosquito. Reclaimed, they might easily support a
