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THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE FARMER.

By Edward B. Williams.

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N a country so large and populous as the United States, with industries so various, the changes from year to year in the aggregate of income and production are so slight, that the tendency toward gain or loss is difficult to detect. Gains are offset by losses; and still production shows a steady increase; it corresponds to the increase of population, and outstrips this gain by a large percentage in the interval between the census years. Barring out the effects of commercial crises and of war as temporary, we know that the growth of wealth in the last twenty-five years has been immense. The shortage in some crops, the depressions in some kinds of manufacturing, and the crises in business, are only the ebb in the tide of prosperity, soon to rise higher than before.

Agriculture is considered the foundation of all industry. It is so in most countries, and much more extensively so in a low and primitive civilization. "The king himself is served by the field." If the farmers are few in any state, the people must largely import their food. According to Giffen, one-third of the population of England live on imported food. In the eastern manufacturing states in America there is a like dependence upon cheap western crops. Only nine per cent of the people of Massachusetts and Rhode Island are engaged in farming. As long as there is peace between a mercantile or manufacturing community and its base of supplies, or while trade continues profitable to both sections, both will prosper. When war arose between the North and South, commercial distress in the North, the South, and in England immediately followed. The consequences were felt in all Europe, in Egypt, and in India.

No great disability can fall upon great division of industry in this country, without affecting other industries here, and to a serious extent abroad. A convulsion or disaster has a quick effect, sometimes but

transient. It is understood, because forced upon observation. But a gradual decline in agriculture might continue so slowly and deceptively that it would escape general notice. If commerce and manufactures could prosper, while the farmer's land was losing value, his crops bringing low prices, his debts increasing, and his income decreasing, neither capitalists nor workingmen would concern themselves. The farmer himself would sell out and invest in city property, while his son would become a mechanic or clerk. Meanwhile there would be an abundance of bread, meat, fruit and vegetables, clothing and furniture, cheap, and all products of city industry declining in value. This would seem a golden era for the workingman and all who buy goods.

Is this a true description of the present situation? Then can the farmer stand the pressure- or, if he gives way, will it injure the mechanic, the operative, the laborer, or the merchant? These classes are supposed to know their own interest and provide for themselves. If the farmer grumbles, he is supposed to be getting along, and to be envious of the rapid gains of the business class. We have no "agricultural distress," no agrarian laws, no peasant class, no slaves. Most American farmers own their land. How can they suffer and become poorer, except by their own bad management and laziness? The possession of land is proclaimed to be the basis of freedom and power by the industrial reformers. The discontent of the farmer arises from his burning desire to make money faster than he can do on the farm! Has he any idea that the great fortunes made in business may put the small landholder at a disadvantage by his marked inferiority in capital, and run him out in competition? The farmers have been complaining and combining for twenty years. The grangers had a great wave of popularity and public notice. They controlled legislation in some of the western states for a time. Their measures were not always wise or successful. Now they seem to be out-generalled and abashed. We

shall watch with interest the new movement in the South. It was right that the farmers should control legislation when they were in the majority. If they made mistakes, they could learn better. Being in the majority, they would not strive to oppress or rob themselves. But they lacked ready money, while furnishing the means of making it to railroads and other corporations. The first man in the West is the speculator, with or without money; after him the farmer.

The farmer is at the mercy of the business class. He knows it. The business man knows it. Though most of the business men fail, their money remains in their class and increases in its main volume. Many men are killed in war; the armies are much diminished; but the survivors conquer, live, and divide the spoils. So in business. The money-power concentrates and fixes values at pleasure. This power to fix values by speculation, cornering, pools, trusts, and corporations makes all outsiders dependents.

The farmer is not identified with the "workingman"; neither is his interest identical with that of the capitalist. He belongs to a conservative middle class, always valuable as an assurance against oppression from above and disorder from below. If we are in danger from a moneyed aristocracy, we may well be anxious to preserve the financial and social freedom of the farmer. If there is no one between the millionnaire and the soil, those who till it will be in the direct employ of the millionnaire. Machinery is now applied to the soil, as it is to its products. When our railroads do not pay well, when our manufacturing is overdone, when our foreign trade is small comparatively, and by foreign vessels, when there is no more desirable government land to buy or to grant, our great landholders will become great landlords, or bonanza farmers. Who can compete with them in great staple products? The large farms can undersell the small ones, until the small farmer is obliged to sell out and work for the capitalist, run hopelessly in debt, or become a tenant. He can no longer have a homestead. Perhaps the rich man would rather be a landlord than a farmer, as in England. In that case, the rent would be as much as the tenant could bear, and still keep the land in good condition.

The peasant and tenant farmers throughout great parts of Europe are unable to improve their condition without the consent and assistance of their landlords or their governments. The crops are sold cheap, the working-classes are unable to buy freely, are poorly fed and underfed, and production is restrained by the poverty and physical weakness of the workingman. Only actual distress appeals to the helpful sympathy of the better classes. They are satisfied, because they are not in want or obliged to toil. This is the natural result of our Christian (?) civilization and natural selection in beautiful harmony. In bleak and sterile lands like Switzerland, there is more practical equality and diffused income. We might anticipate that northern New England and the mountainous tracts of the Alleghanies and Rockies will always be the seat of freedom and endurable poverty; and perhaps, centuries hence, when the people of the Mississippi basin are degraded by effeminacy in the upper classes and slavery, shall we say, among the multitudes, the poor and hardy races from the mountains may become their rulers by right of conquest, - Christianity aside, as usual. But we hope history will not repeat itself. We do not expect that the nation which abolished black slavery will submit to white serfdom.

Before evils are assumed to exist, or to be approaching, it is sensible to examine the signs or proofs of them. The American disposition to self-confidence and boasting has long since sobered down, among most of the people, to a thoughtful and apprehensive mood. There is no question that the wage-working classes are generally uneasy and disposed to combine for self-protection. They are not profiting by the cheapness of farm products. What they gain by low prices for goods is more than lost often by low wages, high rents, and scarcity of employment. The disparity between their poverty, preventing saving and obliging debt, and the immense growth of national wealth, is enough in itself to give them alarm, and it is in vain to try to hoodwink them by optimistic parade of their advantages over European labor by writers who are in the interest and sometimes in the direct employ of those who want to keep the sheep still while they are sheared. It is for the farmer to choose whether he will curry

favor, as a landowner and infant capitalist, with the corporation which nurses him for a profit, or depend upon the welfare of the rest of the population, which furnishes him a market for nearly all he raises. If the poverty of the majority is the poverty of the farmer, here is one place where we must watch for evil to the farmer.

It is easy to take figures and statistics prepared by men self-interested, or even disinterested, and, by ignoring certain great factors of fundamental import, make a fair showing for the farmer, to overawe the ignorant and timid, and silence the doubter. To find out whether the farmer is losing or gaining, his condition in the present and the past must be compared. To show how much better off he is than the European peasant may have a soothing effect upon some spirits. To show that his condition is worse now than it was ten, twenty, and thirty years ago, would have a rousing effect upon most men.

Personal recollections of personal experience in a few localities are not conclusive data. The census heretofore has not given much or thorough attention to those facts and figures which would throw a satisfactory light upon the question of agricultural prosperity from decade to decade. In America it is a rather new subject of investigation. The labor question, closely allied to the agricultural problem, is new. Before the war our general and rapid progress was so apparent and so generally shared, that the knowledge of its existence was enough to satisfy, and the census returns and business reports were not scrutinized by experts and publicists as they now are for even minute indications of industrial movements and tendencies.

If we compare the years 1850, 1860, and 1880, we escape irregular prices and the inflation during and after the war. By the census returns, the specific figures for each point in each census year are not always presented. Among all the working population, including every class of occupation, in 1850, the farmers and farm hands were 7 per cent; in 1870, 47; in 1880, 44 per cent. Diversified industry a better market for the farmer, great increase in manufactured products. All this is very good. But if the rural vote is diminished 33 per cent, and the farmer must turn to town work for a living, like the English

hind, where is your "honest yeomanry, a country's pride"?

For the year 1850 the average income of the farming population was $349. In 1880 it was $288. This is based on returns of farm-product, includes the income of farm-hands, and makes no deduction for interest, taxes, and loss and shrinkage. In 1850 the number to each farm of farming population was 2.56; in 1880, it was 1.89. Here again machinery has sent the superfluous farm-hand to the town. The farmer's expense is lessened and his power of production increased, perhaps twofold, by using the mower, reaper, thresher, haytedder, sulky-plough, and grain-drill. Is the farm-hand he sends to town able to buy the increased production without a lowered price? In the comparison of prices at different periods there is risk of great error, because prices vary so much, according to the season and during the same year. But if prices are low in the city for farm-products, the farming business will not offer so hopeful a prospect. The continual transfer of population to cities increases the capital invested there, and lowers the price of farms. Also, the low price of farm-produce argues that the farmer can feed an increasing city population without making money in the same proportion. And if the income of the whole farming-class was lowered $61 per man in thirty years, while the farm-hands diminished considerably, it points to the presumption that the average farmer cannot afford to pay so much for help. Even as long ago as 1861 a writer in Appleton's Cyclopædia said, "15 years ago (1846) the writer required 20 men to cultivate properly a garden of thirty acres; now, by the use of a few judiciously chosen horse-tools, he cultivates many times that area, with but 8 farm-hands, 4 of whom are boys." But in 1887 the statistician of the Agricultural Department said, "Low prices of farm-produce have caused a reduced demand for human labor — in some cases farmers of the poorer class have abandoned cultivation of their own land and accepted employment from others." The farm-hand at this day obtains higher monthly wages than before the war, but he is less in demand, while the product is so increased that the prices are not remunerative to the small farmer.

Tables of wages have been compiled

and discussed very freely and frequently, but the facts concerning the farmers' income are harder to obtain with exactness, and the precise attempt has, perhaps, never been made officially. A man carrying on a private business is reluctant to publish the financial details. The amount of product per head, or per farm, is only a rough approximate to the average net income. Quite often crops do not pay the cost of production, and one bad season may blast the farmer's prosperity.

The increase in manufactures does not relieve the farmer by increasing the relative number of employés and lessening the competition in food production. The proportion of the four great working classes hardly varied from 1870 to 1880. It was, in proportion to all workers, in

Agricul

ture.

1870, percentage 47.35 1880, 44.I

age.

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Or agriculture lost 6 in 100 hands, while manufactures gained 6 in 100. Taking these two classes apart from the others, however, we have a difference of 13 per cent in favor of manufactures. The sure inference is that we are becoming a manufacturing people and that farming is on the decline. A reaction is possible; but people are pretty certain to forsake a pursuit which does not pay, if they have power to choose, for one which does pay. The other classes also gained a small percentIn a hundred years these proportions would show a change, if unchecked in their tendency, amounting to a total revolution in our social system. Nearly all the population, including the farmers, would be working for wages. We should We should assimilate to the present condition of English working people, and classes would be fixed and well-defined. If we can rely upon the enlightened humanity of the employer, very well. Where there is the densest population and the greatest wealth per caput in the United States, in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, only 9 per cent of the people are engaged in farming; in Indiana, 52; in Illinois, 44; in Arkansas, 83 (the highest); in Mississippi, 82 per cent.

In states where 18 per cent are farmers, their average income is $457. In states where 77 per cent are farmers, their average income is $160. This includes the

farm-hand. In the first instance, land is worth $38.65, in the second, $5.18 per acre. Yet in the manufacturing states farm-land is falling in value. The above figures are from the United States Agricultural Reports. In Hudson's Railways and the Republic it is stated that while the acreages of improved land increased in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Vermont, and Maine 5,166,000 acres, farm-land lost in value $408,000,000. Even in Illinois, the first agricultural state in the union, the rural population is decreasing, and lands can be bought as low, or lower; than twenty years ago. The complaint in the East is that farming don't pay; in the Central states, that the railroads rob the producer; in the New West, that the landgrabber dictates terms to the settler and the great ranches absorb the best tracts with the available water.

The future of farming is in the Mississippi valley, if anywhere, and the prospect of the great grain states of the West, where agriculture will always be the first interest, is of serious importance to every one who eats bread and meat. If tenant-farming increases until the greater portion of the land pays rent, the assessed value may rise, while the increase in taxes is added to the rent. The high price of land, while rent is also high, will hold the farmer in his dependent position. This state of things is already realized in California, where great proprietors absorb the proceeds of the crops. The number of tenant farmers in the country was first ascertained by the census of 1880. Their number, as returned in 1890, will be a strong circumstance in showing the tendency to capitalistic investment in land. The increase in the number of large farms will also be good evidence of the establishment of landed estates. The power to buy and hold great tracts of fertile land is the power to enslave those who live upon it, whether the bondage is nominal or real, mild or severe.

The low price of new land, with the decline in value of the old, is a most favorable chance for investment for those who have the money.

The average number of acres to each farm in the country was in

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every 3.19 of the male population over 21 was a landholder. By the census of 1880 there was a farm to every 3.19 of this class of the population, to say nothing of other real estate. "In eastern Nebraska and Kansas and western Iowa and Missouri there were more large farms twenty years ago than there are to-day." (James Willis Gleed, Forum, March, 1890.) Here is proof that the average size of farms has decreased. It is an established fact that small farms well worked pay better than large farms poorly worked. The marketgardener makes more than the grain farmer. If large tracts are held to sell in quantities to suit, there is little danger of land monopoly. But if these great areas in private hands-whole counties, duchies and principalities—are held to aggrandize private individuals, titles of rank add a mere nothing to the power of their owners. Between 1870 and 1880 farms of 50 to 100 acres have increased in number 37 per cent; those of 100 to 500 acres have trebled; between 500 and 1000 acres quintupled their increase; and those of over 1000 acres are eight times as numerous. In 1883 eight men owned over 18,000,000 acres, or each of them, on an average, owned a state three times the size of Rhode Island. The railroads have received whole kingdoms of the best land in the country. All of the government land is now disposed of, which was considered fit for farming. Great land-grants are nothing new in our history. They have been sold in small lots, and settled by a numerous population. If this process goes on as heretofore, the farmer may remain a freeholder. But if our money-lords desire to enclose great parks and hunting-grounds, and then put a high price on the land they are willing to sell, they can gradually raise the artificial value of all land; or if they wish to purchase, they can depreciate the value by railroad discrimination in a certain district, compelling the sale of any kind of product at ruinous rates, till producers must cease and sell their plant.

Land-hunger has not yet become an American trait. Land is easy to acquire. Owners sell freely. Land is not sought, but the profit on it. Where population grows but slowly, no one cares to invest, unless their means and plans are such that they are confident of drawing population. Between 1850 and 1860 Iowa land in

creased over 900 per cent in value, while Pennsylvania gained 96 per cent. From 1875 to 1885 farm-land in Massachusetts decreased in value 14.12 per cent on woodland, 12.53 on unimproved, but gained 4.95 per cent on cultivated land. But the gross income of the' farmer in that state was $1061, far above the average of the whole country.

In 1886 state district agents reported to the Agricultural Department at Washington concerning the financial condition of the farmers. They declared that eastern farmers were not much burdened; that many of the more prosperous had western mortgages, and the greatest amount of debt was west of the Mississippi. In New York three-tenths of the farms were mortgaged, I in 20 hopelessly, and land had depreciated fully 33 per cent in ten years. A large proportion of farm-mortgages were held by other farmers. Twenty per cent of the farmers had other investments, but only 5 per cent had money in anything but farm property. In Pennsylvania one-fourth of the farmers were in debt. The same in Ohio. In Kentucky only 8 per cent; in Michigan, one-third; in Illinois, the same; in Wisconsin, 20 or 25 per cent; in Kansas, one-half, but less debt than ten years ago; and in Nebraska but little debt. In the New West the rapid rise in land-values, with low and easy terms of purchase, make mortgages at high interest a safe thing in very many cases, but poverty and lost crops make the settler's lot a hard one just as often. The census is expected to ascertain the extent of farm-mortgages this year. The eastern farmer has capital and owns his farm, and has a better market close at hand. He is in a small minority of all the farmers. Many western farmers are as rich, some of them much richer, than the owner of rugged New England soil; but the average western producer, though he may load a small freight-train with his crops in a good season, has a market and soil alike so unreliable, that he is often at the mercy of the speculator and mortgage company. It does not insure his success that the soil is rich and the market great, because the seasons are uncertain and he has never been able to control the market.

The farmer cannot now go further west with advantage. The railroads and the ranches have the start of him. In the South 8,000,000 negroes till the soil.

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