716 ANNUAL REPORTS OF DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



averasje crop produced on those farms where the ])lans and methods 

 of the demonstration work have been adopted. 



THE INCREASED COST OF LIVING. 



A dominant feature from a statistical view point of the past year, 

 as well as now, has boon the persistent agitation regarding and dis- 

 cussion of the increased cost of living. 



The prices of food products, wearing apparel, and other necessaries 

 have been advancing in recent years to an extent that has caused 

 widespread interest and vital concern to all classes except those 

 whose incomes are sufficiently large to render them indifTerent to 

 increased costs, or to those whose earnings and consequent buying 

 power have increased in equal or greater ratio than have the prices 

 of commodities they are compelled to purchase. 



The general advance in prices has been greater than the increase 

 in earnings of the average wage-earner in cities and towns or those 

 employed in mining, manufacturing, or transportation, whose incomes, 

 in many instances, have been stationary or nearly so. Thousands of 

 these classes have been feeling more and more the pressure of advanc- 

 ing prices, and their plaints have been voiced frequently and insist- 

 ently by newspapers, magazines, and legislators. 



But the advance in prices has not affected similarly all classes of 

 those who work for their livelihood, and the question as to whether 

 such advance has or has not become burdensome depends for its 

 solution in any case on the ascertainment of facts regarding the rela- 

 tive earnings and purchasing power of consumers at this time as 

 compared with a time when necessary commodities of nearly every 

 kind commanded lower prices than at present. 



There is no question as to the conditions prevailing in cities and 

 towns; in the country, however, they have been and are far different. 



Quietly the farmer has been rising from the depths into which he 

 was cast by the ruinously low prices in the early nineties until now 

 he has reached a plane where he receives a well-deserved recompense 

 for his labors. Probably never before has the average farmer been 

 in better condition than in recent years. Farmers are rapidly acquir- 

 ing the modern conveniences formerly possessed only by those living 

 in cities, such as furnace-heated houses, water and bath facilities, 

 free mail delivery, telephones, etc., and, with good crops commanding 

 remunerative prices, he is becoming more and more able to secure 

 such conveniences and to indulge in many luxuries enjoyed pre- 

 viously only by the prosperous in urban communities. 



Within the past ten years the purchasing -power of the farmer has 

 increased more than 50 per cent. Such conditions are having and 

 will continue to have more force in keeping the rising generation of 

 farmers' children upon the farm than volumes upon volumes of 

 printed advice to stay there. When there was much hardship and 

 no profit in farming, such advice was useless; now farm life is becom- 

 ing profitable and more attractive, and such advice is becoming 

 unnecessary. 



With a view to ascertaining definitely the effect of the higher 

 prices of nearly every necessary of life on the greatest of all classes of 

 Americans engaged in the greatest of all American occupations, the 

 Bureau of Statistics has recently made a special inquiry regarding 

 the average retail prices of about eighty-live staple commodities 



