REPORT OF THE STATISTICIAN. 417 



geria, Egypt, Australia, and at the Cape of Good Hope. In round 

 numbers the present area of maize may be stated approximately at 

 120,000,000 acres, and the product at 2,600,000,000 bushels, making 

 an average product of about 22 bushels per acre. 



DEBTS OF FARMERS. 



There are now about 5,000,000 owners of farms. A million of 

 new farms have been acquired since 1880. Many of the 4,000,000 

 then in cultivation have since changed hands. Hundreds of thou- 

 sands of these are owned by young men and others who never before 

 tilled lands of their own, and who commenced husbandry with small 

 means, little more than health, energy, and determination to succeed. 

 Necessarily indebtedness has been incurred in many of these cases, 

 , in purchasing old farms, in stocking farms already paid for, or in 

 fencing and building upon lands obtained from the Government un- 

 der the homestead act. To such as commenced judiciously, with a 

 full knowledge of the responsibilities involved, and with will and 

 industry commensurate with the burden assumed, a mortgage may 

 l^rove a blessing. It represents capital, without which the business 

 of farming cannot be undertaken or its products and profits be se- 

 cured. It enables a poor but capable and industrious young man to 

 secure a home and a profitable business, paying for it in easy install 

 ments; but it becomes a withering curse when it makes productioi 

 dear and difficult, consumes a crop before it is made, and renders ir • 

 debtedness hopeless. 



The system of advances by merchants or brokers upon growing 

 crops is especially dangerous and disastrous. It is not usually a preva- 

 lent practice, except in districts where a single crop dominates rural 

 industry and brings ready money at any time, rendering borrowing 

 easy and encouraging the habit of spending before earning. It has 

 been prevalent from time immemorial — at least for forty years from 

 personal knowledge of the writer — in the cotton States. 



No product of agriculture is more surely a money crop in any part 

 of the world than cotton, and none more promptly traverses the ways 

 of commerce. It has therefore become (with perhaps one principal 

 associate — maize) almost the sole product of large districts of coun- 

 try, rendering necessary the purchase abroad of supplies of all kinds, 

 agricultural and industrial, and their original cost, long-distance 

 transportation, and wholesale and retail profits render them exceed- 

 ingly expensive. It is selling the cheapest cotton in the world and 

 buying all supjjlies at enormous prices — a practice with which only 

 fertile lands, abundant croj^s, and persistent industry can save from 

 bankruptcy. 



It is a matter of congratulation that the burden of debt is decreas- 

 ing, and is in fact relatively less than it was ten years ago. An in- 

 vestigation made by State statistical agents, undertaken to show the 

 actual and comparative condition of farmers as to indebtedness, affords 

 evidence of gradual amelioration, decrease in number and amount of 

 farm mortgages, and in advances by merchants in those regions where 

 such practice prevails. The inquiry was first made in the cotton States; 

 afterwards in the Ohio Valley, and in New York and Pennsylvania. 

 In the Eastern States, where no such inquiry has yet been instituted, 

 the farmers are not burdened very much with debt, while many of 

 the more prosperous hold mortgages on farms of the distant West 

 and other farms of Western property. In the newer States west of 

 27 AG— '86- 



