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$4 and $5 per acre; a short time since I sold the same quality of land, contiguous, for 
$20 per acre. Lake: Lands are increasing in value at about 25 per cent. per annum, 
and have been for several years. Illustration: I bought the farm on which I now live, 
in 1860, for $125 ; it is now worth $4,000. Alameda: All farming lands have advanced 
from $1.25 per acre and upwards a few years ago, according to quality and location ; 
and now many of these lands are held at prices ranging from $25 per acre to $150, and 
will pay interest at those figures. 
CoLorApo.—Huerfano : We have no value attached to our lands; the way is still 
clear for those desiring farms to take up claims. There are claims on the Huerfano, 
Cucharas, and Apishpa that could not be bought for $50 per acre. Larimer: Farm- 
lands are increasing rapidly in value. No comparison can be made with 1860, as at 
that time there were no white settlers in this county. I think it safe to say that it has 
doubled in last four years. El Paso: Farm-lands are increasing in value. Good 
farm property has advanced 200 to 300 per cent. in the three years past. 
Uran.—Morgan : The price of land has gradually increased. Meadow-land is valued 
at $50 per acre, tillable land at $25 per acre. 
Daxora.— Union : Farm-lands are rapidly increasing in value. In 1860 there were 
but few settlers in this county. Farms that were taken under the pre-emption and 
homestead laws six or eight years ago are worth from $1,000 to $6,000. 
DISCOURAGEMENTS AND THEIR REMEDIES. 
The farmer is sometimes credited with a disposition to view too con- 
tinuously the clouded aspects of his business. While seed-time and 
harvest fail not, and honest labor makes sure of some reward, the extent 
of that reward must vary somewhat according to the vicissitudes of the 
season, the skill and assiduity of the producer, the wants of the con- 
sumer, and the unhallowed combinations of greed and knavery to filch 
from toil a large measure of its slow accumulation. The farmer lives in 
isolation, but not in idleness; the non-producer of Ishmaelitish in- 
Stincts, standing outside of the real necessities of legitimate exchange 
and transfer, with wits sharpened by hungering for the bread of others, 
marks the producer for his prey; and it is no disparagement to the one, 
in the midst of his unsuspecting and toilful pre-cccupation, that he loses 
frequently by the consummate arts of the other. Scarcely any other re- 
sult is possible when the Ishmaelite is a wealthy and far-reaching com- 
bination, perverting a beneficent vocation into a scheme of plunder. 
The farmer’s business is rarely if ever one of excessive profits ; yet itis 
safe, healthful, respectable, and, with the employment of an equal meas- 
ure of tact and perseverance, is surer than most others to lead to a 
satisfactory competence. In the present era of speculation, when agri- 
cultural colleges educate farmers’ sons for the stock-market rather than 
stock-growing, and agricultural fairs tend more to the advantage of “ the 
turf” than the soil, it is not strange that some discontent among farmers 
should arise at the slowness of their pace in the journey of accumulation. 
While it is perfectly safe to assert, and an easy task to prove, that the 
past ten years have constituted a period of average prosperity, (except 
as to the direct losses of the late war in the theater of its operations,) 
with which no similar period in our history can compare, it is true, as 
the annual records of prices have shown, that for several years past 
farm values have been receding slowly from the high point attained 
soon after the close of the war; and also true that wide fluctuation in 
price, still more discouraging in its influence, has resulted from a failure 
to keep the proper balance in variety of production. There isa feeling 
of discontent that naturally arises from a comparison with those times 
of high prices, apparently prosperous, though delusive, as all periods of 
temporary prosperity must be, as expressed by the correspondent of 
Crawford County, Pennsylvania : “ Farmers can neither make as much 
money, nor so easily, as during inflation of currency.” 
