246 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



as the total value of farm products in the state of Georgia; while 

 the total value of all Iowa's farm products lacks only one third of one 

 per cent, of equaling the combined totals of Virginia, North Carolina, 

 South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Only Texas can compare in the 

 volume of her agricultural output with this banner state of the north- 

 west, and even she falls short more than $135,580,000. 



We must concede, therefore, that the south occupies the second 

 place among the great geographical divisions of the country as a 

 producer of agricultural wealth. 



The Southern Farmer in 1893 and in 1903. 



The condition of the southern farmer has immensely improved in 

 the last ten years. To-day he stands, for the first time since the war 

 of secession, in a position promising permanent betterment of his 

 farming and of his social position. Until recent years three causes, 

 any one of which was a fearful incubus, combined to pull him down, 

 viz., low prices, the lien system and bad farming, including under this 

 head poor management and antiquated methods. 



Scarcely any impediment is heavier to bear up against than pro- 

 ducing for a long term of years for a continuously falling market. 

 Sir Guildford Molesworth estimates that between the years 1872 

 and 1894 the prices of general commodities fell 50 per cent.; the 

 price of wheat 60 per cent.; that of cotton 70 per cent. In manu- 

 factures this depression of prices was in large measure offset by new 

 inventions and economies in production; but the agriculturist, from 

 the nature of his occupation, is almost entirely cut off from such 

 retreats. 



To add to the hardship of his salable commodity's constantly falling 

 in price at a rate so rapid that we may say that the value of his cotton 

 appreciably diminished even while the boll expanded, the southern 

 farmer was drawn by circumstances into doing business under a sys- 

 tem which subjected him to a ruinous usury and left him almost com- 

 pletely robbed of his freedom as to planting profitable or unprofitable 

 crops. Along with the rest of the structure of southern industry, the 

 war of secession shattered the system of agricultural credit. There 

 was no longer a class of large planters possessed of valuable estates 

 to whom banks of immense capital or wealthy factors stood ready to 

 lend at fair interest. Eeady money existed only in the traditions of the 

 past; the southern farmer found himself without the means to buy 

 even the seed to put into the ground. Then the crop lien law came 

 to his assistance and remained to his destruction. 



This system of industrial peonage known as the lien law works 

 as follows: The farmer prepares in February for planting. He goes 

 to the proprietor of an establishment, which in its typical form is a 



