REPORT OF THE STATISTICIAN. 427 



country merchants; of Texas, 12 per cent, nominal interest for sup- 

 plies cliargecl at excess of 25 to 50 per cent. ; of Arkansas, 10 per cent, 

 by contract on supplies charged an extra profit of 40 per cent. These 

 are the averages assumed by our State agents as the cost of interest 

 on advances secured by crop liens. 



It appears that a large proportion of cotton planters are in debt for 

 current supjDlies, and that the loss resulting amounts to 85,000,000 per 

 annum in some States, and absorbs nearly or quite all the profits of 

 production, while the soil is wearing away, with the lives of the cul- 

 tivators, for the benefit of the commercial class. 



CONCLUSIONS. 



The facts developed indicate a considerable amount of indebted 

 ness, diminishing from west to east and from south to north. It is 

 gratifying to know that the burden is decreasing. The element of 

 time in eliminating debts of pioneer settlement and improvement is 

 obvious, for a large proportion of Ameri-can farmers have settled 

 with little capital, and have erected houses and barns, built fences, 

 dug ditches, felled forests, or broken jDrairies by the labor of their 

 own hands. The capital in agriculture is of recent creation; much 

 the largest portion from the labor of a single generation of workers. 



The inducement to improve and stock a farm on the basis of free 

 land is sufficient to warrant incurring indebtedness on the security 

 of youth and will and muscle; and the gradual reduction of the debt, 

 while the property is increasing in value, is a surety of ultimate 

 removal of the burden. 



The worst form of indebtedness — advances upon growing crops, at 

 exorbitant prices for goods supplied farmers for the accommodation, 

 and high rates of interest — which has so long throttled industry and 

 devoured the proceeds of labor in the cotton States, is gradually fall- 

 ing into disuse and should ultimately be discarded utterly. It is use- 

 less to hope for rural prosperity where the practice prevails. In such 

 cases the borrower is literally a slave to the lender. In the older 

 States the unagricultural property of farmers, in shares of banks and 

 manufactures, notes, bonds and mortgages, and interests in minor 

 local enterpriseSj is greater than the total indebtedness of the farming 

 class. In most of the Central States, those of the Ohio Valley, this 

 is also the case, where land is rising in value and wealth outside of 

 agriculture is decreasing and absorbing the profits of farms and the 

 proceeds of land sold by farmers who are contracting operations or 

 retiring from active husbandry. In the remoter districts, where the 

 pioneer is borrowing funds from distant capitalists, and the cotton 

 grower is consuming his crop before it is grown, by the aid of the 

 city broker, there may be less net capital in agriculture than the 

 assessor shows. 



On the whole the situation is hopeful, and the intrinsic wealth in 

 agriculture slowly accumulating. The low prices of products are, 

 indeed, discouraging, especially to those in debt. For the excessive 

 decline in some of these the farmers are themselves to blame in not 

 better adjusting production to consumption. Gradually there will 

 come adjustment and a nearer approach to equality in values, and 

 there will be less of hardship in the situation. Probably a reduction 

 in wages of farm labor wiir be one of the movements in this adjust- 

 ment, as wages are now higher than products. The tendency of the 

 times is towards lower rates of wages in all kinds of industries of the 



