598 TWENTY-SECOND ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 



been in before. For forty years I have been connected with farming, and 

 I have passed through many panics and depressions, but never have I 

 seen the farmer's purchasing power rdeuced to its present level. To this 

 conference I can truthfully state that I have never seen such a helpless 

 condition prevailing among such a large percentage of our farmers in the 

 great corn belt as during the past year. 



Our present hard condition is not due to any failure to work. Year after 

 year since the war broke out we have produced to the maximum. Our 

 wives, mothers and daughters have worked in the fields as never before. 



When the war came to an end, and our sons left the army and the navy 

 to again take up farming, thousands of them started out farming for 

 themselves, buying land, live stock and machinery at the peak prices of 

 1919 and 1920. Thousands of hard-working tenants whose specialty had 

 been the raising of crops and the feeding of live stock, had saved up a 

 few thousand dollars and had come to a time of life when it was customary 

 to make a payment down on a home of their own. These frugal, indus- 

 trious men, accustomed to neither war nor speculation, had no reason to 

 believe that they were embarking on a peculiarly hazardous enterprise 

 when they bought a farm of their own with a small payment down. And 

 now, scattered all over the corn belt, are thousands on thousands of these 

 hard-working young farmers who are facing financial ruin. Some are em- 

 bittered by their unhappy experiences. 



Even middle-aged and old farmers who had accumulated a competence 

 before the war broke out, have watched their assets melt away like ice on 

 a summer day. In almost every community one may find stories of such 

 men. They are broken financially and spiritually. They are looking anx- 

 iously for renewed hope. 



Why is it, they ask, that they now have to pay 400 bushels of corn for 

 a wagon which they used to buy for 150 bushels; or 700 bushels for a 

 binder that used to cost 300 bushels? Why must they pay 350 bushels of 

 corn for a gang plow which formerly cost 125 bushels; or 150 bushels for 

 a suit of clothes which formerly cost 50 bushels; or 33 bushels for the 

 shoes that formerly cost 9 bushels? 



The rank and file of the corn belt farmers are fighting against heavy 

 odds. They may have sold their grain and live stock for less than half the 

 cost of production. They may have sold their own labor and the labor of 

 their wives and children at less than 5 cents an hour. But they are still 

 fighting on, and they are thinking more seriously than ever before. 



Men who are working ten to fifteen hours a day and facing a situation 

 of this sort day after day want results. From a greatly reduced income 

 they are compelled to pay greatly increased prices for supplies and trans- 

 portation. They become impatient under the necessity of paying rail- 

 road rates 50 per cent above pre-war rates, coal prices 100 per cent above 

 pre-war coal prices, and other prices 50 to 150 per cent above pre-war 

 prices. They read in government reports that persons engaged in other 

 great industries continue to enjoy abnormally high compensation for their 

 services. They want to know if this is necessary, in view of the fact that 

 the cost of food is a chief part of the cost of living, and they do know 



