28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in the very air. Whatever the best civilization has to offer, out- 

 side of great cities or large towns, was accessible to the homes 

 they represented. If anywhere on the planet human beings could 

 be happy and prosperous, in beautiful homes, it should have been 

 there. 



But the farms were for sale, nevertheless ; and, though this 

 was fifteen years and more ago, some of them are for sale still. 

 The column and a half of advertisements was only a sample of a 

 hundred other columns of advertisements of a similar sort pub- 

 lished in other New England papers ; and the offers to sell still 

 go on. The clipping sent to me, as symptomatic of a great move- 

 ment, came from the office of a famous protectionist daily, and 

 was sent in order that I might make some appropriate comment 

 upon the situation, or give some advice which should be apt or 

 remedial in relation to it. 



This was done at a period, however, when there was no ques- 

 tion of taxation or political economy uppermost in the public 

 mind. No suspicion, even, was entertained that legislation of any 

 sort was involved in the problem presented, or that any other 

 than a hortative appeal to boys to stick to the farm, or some sug- 

 gestion as to better modes of farming, was needed. 



It is now twenty years, at least, that farming has been going 

 rapidly downward. Farms bought in the war era have been sell- 

 ing almost everywhere in the East for from one half to one third 

 of their cost. Farms in New England, and some in the Middle 

 States, are frequently sold for less than the buildings cost which 

 are upon them. This is really no exaggeration. Sales of this 

 sort, and where the depreciation in value has wiped out the own- 

 er's equity in them, have been for years a matter of notorious 

 knowledge in almost every Eastern community. Within a year, 

 in a healthy and fertile county not sixty miles from New York 

 city, a farm having on it two mortgages a first mortgage of 

 three thousand dollars and a second mortgage of two thousand 

 was sold, under foreclosure, for the sum represented by the first 

 mortgage only. The holder of the second one did not think it 

 worth while to be present, or to have a representative present, at 

 the sale, to bid the single dollar which would have saved or made 

 a show of saving his investment. 



Very recently the New York State assessors have issued a 

 report containing some results of what they have discovered so 

 far as they have gone, in respect to the assessed valuations of 

 farm lands in the various counties. And this is their story : " In 

 fourteen counties visited they found that farming lands had de- 

 preciated in value, while city property had increased in value." 

 State Assessor Wood is of the opinion that " in a few decades 

 there will be few or none but tenant farmers in this State. Year 



