The most outstanding feature of American industry is the abundance of fertile farm lands. Upon no other country has nature lavished this gift so freely, and no other people have appropriated this gift to better advantage. Here we have a partial explanation of the prosperity of our people and a partial cause of our disregard for thrift. Continental United States embraces an area of approximately three million square miles, or two billion acres. Of this great area practically one-half is under cultivation. The rest is utilized for other industrial purposes, such as in city sites, in forests, and in reservations, or is allowed to remain unappropriated as are the desert lands in the Southwest. The wide expanse of the country north and south accounts in large part for the diversity of crops which we are able to produce. From the North and Northwest comes wheat; from the central Mississippi Valley, corn and oats; from the upper South, tobacco; from the Gulf regions, cotton, rice, and sugar; from California and Florida, subtropical fruits; while the production of hay, vegetables, small fruits, live stock, poultry, milk, and cheese is carried on in all sections of the country. Thus, the variety of the agricultural products of our country is as great as that of all Western Europe with its numerous political units and its relatively large population. In other words, the United States as a single nation possesses agricultural possibilities possessed by no European country.