182 INTERNATIONAL TRADE 
JET em 
effectiveness of all the labor needed to bring an article to market is 
meant; not merely that of the labor immediately and obviously 
applied (like that of the farmer), but that of the inventor and 
maker of threshing-machines and gangplows, and that of the 
manager and worker on the railways and ships. In other indus- 
tries, even more markedly than in agriculture, the labor of the 
directing heads, of the planners and designers, tells in high degree 
for the final effectiveness of the labor which is applied thru all 
the successive stages. But in agriculture as practiced in the 
United States the guiding and contriving mind tells more than 
in the agriculture of any other country. 
The heart of the country, the main source of its prosperity and 
power, is in the great central plain, the valleys of the Mississippi 
and Missouri. Here is the region of extensive cultivation, of 
agricultural machinery, the one-family farm. True, during the 
harvest season there is a heavy demand for agricultural laborers, 
met in large part by transients. It is true, further, that the stage 
of pioneer farming has been passed or is rapidly being passed, 
that rotation is becoming more systematic and skilful, the land 
more valuable, cultivation more intensive. Nevertheless this 
remains the region of the one-family farm. The farmers “ride 
on their stirring plows and cultivators” and in this way do most 
of the work on their lands for themselves. No economic and 
social situation of this kind has ever before appeared in the world’s 
history. Land in plenty, no density of population, the labor 
power spread thin over the land, an agricultural output large per 
unit of man-power but not large per unit of area; farms large in 
acreage, and capitalistic production (in the sense that much 
machinery is used) ; the labor of agriculture done mainly by the 
owners of the soil; no sharp cleavage between land owners and 
land workers; little inequality in economic and social status, a 
high general level of prosperity; a landed class not rich and not 
poor, not highly cultured but far from inert or dull. The phe- 
nomenon is unique in history. 
What all this means with reference to the present inquiry is 
brought out perhaps best of all by one striking episode: the