aries. Still, therefore, the whole working class is getting poorer and the prospect for the children of that class gets darker.

But the tariff tinkers were not the only Old Docs that undertook to find a cure for these

augmenting troubles. A great many declared that at bottom the whole thing was a question of getting more out of the land. We were not producing enough.

Thus, if we produced more wheat the price would fall, and that would bring down the price of bread, and when bread fell of course other things would fall, too, and there you are with a full solution. Back to the farm - that was the grand idea. Let everybody go to farming. Only a small part of the total surface of the land was cultivated. Immense areas in addition were susceptible of cultivation. Let all those now suffering from poverty in our cities go west and turn farmer. This would relieve the congestion in the labor market and at the same time reduce the cost of living by increasing enormously the supplies of food. How the people of the cities were to get possession of farms was not explained, nor how if they got the land they would find farming profitable when the prices of all farm products were to be cut in half or so. But trifles like these were not al

lowed to stand in the way of the only true and infallible remedy for all the ills of the nation. Hence, back to the land! Let everybody turn farmer! Shoes, probably, and trousers on bushes. land!

would grow on trees, Anyway, back to the

Well, it seems we have been going back to the land, and we have been increasing our farm products, and yet nobody can detect any change in the general situation, except that it grows

worse.

I have here the figures before me. In 1913 there were more farms than ever, and they produced more food. The value of the farm products raised in the United States in that year was more than six billion dollars, and exceeded any crop records in our history. We raised about twice as much in 1913 as we raised in 1899, and a billion dollars' worth more than we raised in 1909. It was the bumper crop of America.

The number of farms had increased 11 per cent. since 1910. The total number in 1913 was 6,600,000.

So we have been going back to the land, and we have been applying this far-famed remedy, and these are the results. I do not need to preach any pessimistic view of the outcome.

An official bulletin of the Agricultural Department tells the story and supplies the comment. First, the facts. The bulletin says:

ever

Corn, with a value of $1,692,000,000, comprised 28 per cent. of the value of all crops, although the volume was under the record. The other principal crops with values are given in the order in which they come: Cotton, $798,000,000; hay, $797,000,000; wheat-the largest crop raised in this country-$610,000,000; oats, $440,000,000; potatoes, $228,000,000; tobacco, $122,000,000; barley, $96,000,000; sweet potatoes, $43,000,000; sugar beets, $34,000,000; Louisiana cane sugar, $26,000,000; rye, $26,000,000; rice, $22,000,000; flaxseed, $21,000,000; hops $15,000,000; buckwheat, $10,000,000.

In quantity of estimated production the record has been broken by wheat, rye, rice, sugar beets, beet sugar, and the total of beet and cane sugar. Of the remaining crops, oats, barley, cotton and hops have been exceeded twice in production.

The value of the crops of 1913 is high. A new high record in estimated value is made by the total of all cereals, and separately by corn, cotton, cottonseed, tobacco, and sugar beets. Only once has there been a higher estimated value of oats, rye, rice, potatoes, hay, hops, and the total of beet and cane sugar. Only twice has the estimated value of wheat and of beet sugar been exceeded.

Dairy products of 1918 are estimated at more than $814,000,000; eggs and fowls have an estimated value of more than $578,000,000.

The wool production of 1913 was estimated at 304,000,000 pounds.

Their

The prices of fourteen principal crops average about 20.2 per cent. higher than a year ago and 4.6 per cent. higher than two years ago. total values average about 3.8 per cent. higher than a year ago and 7.6 per cent. higher than two years ago.

The value of the agricultural exports of domestic production in the fiscal year 1913 was $1,123,021,469, an amount which has not before been equaled. The reexports, otherwise called the exports of foreign agricultural products, are estimated at $12,000,000. The so-called balance of trade in agricultural products is in favor of the exports of domestic farm products by $296,000,

000.

The cotton crop now seems to be established in value as next in order after corn. The lint of this crop in 1913, at the price of December 1, had an estimated value of $798,000,000, and this was not equaled in any former year. It is 142 per cent. above the average of the preceding five years. The estimated number of bales of 500 pounds gross weight in this crop is 13,677,000; consequently, this crop has been exceeded in quantity by the crops of 1911 and 1912. If the estimated value of the cotton seed is added to that of lint, the total farm value of this crop amounts to $945,000,000, an increase of 16 per cent. over the average of the previous five years.

That seems to make the back to the farm argument look pretty sick. But listen to what

the department says:

However desirable increased production on farms may appear to be from the consumer's standpoint,

it does not follow that such increased production would result in any increase in the cash income per farm or per capita of farm population, or that prices paid by consumers would be any lower.

Had the total production in 1913 equaled or exceeded the 1912 production, it seems probable that the cash income per farm would not have been greater, and might have been less than in 1912; but it is extremely doubtful whether the cost to the consumer would have been any less, because retail prices are promptly raised on a prospect of underproduction, but are very slow to decline if there is overproduction.

So it seems there is little hope here; the prices of food continue to increase, but the farmer gets nothing of the increase.

Something deeper and far more radical than this seems to be our ailment.

Not long ago Congressman H. W. Summers of Texas, who represents a cotton growing constituency, made a sensation in the House of Representatives by a speech on the condition of the Southern farmer. He said:

It is said that the man who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew is a public bene`factor, but we are offering mighty poor encouragement for the two-blade production if the two blades bring less money than the one would have brought.

In 1910 Southern farmers produced 12,000,000 bales of cotton. The world said that was not enough. The next year they produced 16,000,000 bales. It cost them millions of dollars more.