402 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



oiit exuding a drop of sweat or soiling his hands. All this makes the 

 western farmer exceedingly hopeful and optimistic and he is prepared 

 to listen to the prophecies of the city editor who tells him that every 

 acre of good land in Iowa will soon be worth one hundred dollars and land 

 in the adjoining states will increase in the same proportion to its present 

 value. A good many who are skeptical on this point have embraced the 

 opportunity and cashed in; that is, have sold their lands at high prices 

 and invested in cheaper lands, hoping for a similar streak of good luck 

 some time in the future, or put it out at interest, or let it lie as a heavy 

 mortgage at interest on the land sold. 



Without repeating what we have said before as to the causes of this 

 advance, it may be well to remark that whether land will remain at the 

 present prices depends after all on its productive value; that is, on its 

 ability to pay the rate of interest which other first class securities, such 

 as railway or city bonds, bring in the market. If it can be so farmed 

 that it will produce this amount of income either as rent or interest plus 

 the labor and care involved in looking after it. then it will remain at 

 that price; that is, land that will yield four dollars per acre on the 

 investment is worth one hundred dollars as long as first mortgages on 

 railroads yield 4 per cent. If, however, the railroads should be compelled 

 to pay iy., per cent, then the land must pay four and one half dollars 

 per acre to be worth one hundred dollars. 



Many of our readers may not see the connection between land and 

 railroad bonds. The connection is just this: Money will seek invest- 

 ment where it can get the highest rate of interest with undoubted secur- 

 ity and will change from one investment to another provided it can 

 secure a greater return. The price, therefore, which land maintains per- 

 manently will depend on the net income that it yields. 



It is, therefore, very easy to see that if land is to maintain the pres- 

 ent high prices, it must yield in average years a greater return than it 

 has in the past. Therefore, if these paper values are to be made real by 

 the men who still own their farms, they must do a good deal better farm- 

 ing than they have done in the past. It is needless to say that any sys- 

 tem of farming that allows land to lose its fertility and become less pro- 

 ductive must sooner or later fall in price, and the farmer will find these 

 paper values vanish if he holds his land and fails to farm it in such a 

 way that it will yield the largest possible returns. This opens up a sub- 

 ject entirely too wide for discussion in any one issue. We have room 

 only for a suggestion or two. 



If the farmer so improves his methods that for ten years to come 

 the land produces ten bushels of corn per acre more than it has done in 

 the ten years past, he will have more than covered the increase in price. 

 We are having the boys figure that out, therefore, we will not state how 

 much an average yield of ten bushels additional per acre puts into the 

 actual price of the land. The same may be said of land in wheat, if he 

 can so improve his seed bed and his seed that instead of growing fifteen 

 bushels, as in the past, he can grow twenty bushels in the future he need 

 not fear that his paper profits will vanish. If he can so improve the 

 breeding of his cattle by the purchase of thoroughbred sires and grading 



