92 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 



ceipts; but the difficulty is that your pesky competitors will keep on 

 bidding against you, offering high prices for what you have to buy 

 and low prices for what you have to sell, thus forcing you to the wall 

 unless you are approximately as good a business man as they are. If 

 you fall materially below the standard set by them you will fail. 

 There is no business or profession to which this rule does not apply 

 just as definitely and rigidly as it does to farming. 



PRICES AND PROFITS 



This being the case there is no such thing as "cost plus ten per 

 cent," or "a living plus ten per cent" for any except the more capable 

 farmers, if the ten per cent is to be realized on the price of the land 

 as well as on the rest of the investment. There will always be a con- 

 siderable number who are just hovering on the margin, and another 

 number who are below the margin and headed toward bankruptcy. 

 This cannot be prevented, even by government price fixing. If the 

 government were to fix the price of corn at two dollars a bushel and 

 maintain it, guaranteeing to every farmer without exception that 

 price, it would still be almost as difficult for the inefficient corn 

 grower as it is now. To begin with, the price of corn land would 

 go up. If any of you own good corn land, you would not sell it 

 under those conditions at the price which you are now willing to take. 

 If you are contemplating buying corn land, you would be willing to 

 pay a higher price, under those conditions, than you are now willing 

 to pay. This competitive bidding for land would go on precisely as 

 it does now. The best business men among corn farmers, that is, 

 those who could organize the working force of the farm so thoroly as 

 to keep expenses down or to get the largest possible number of bushels 

 per unit of expense could afford to pay and would, as a matter of 

 fact, pay a higher price for corn land than the less capable farmers 

 could possibly afford to pay. The inefficient farmer would have just 

 as hard a time paying for his land if he bought it, or paying rent for 

 his land if he rented it, as he now has. Again, the efficient manager 

 who could so direct his labor force as to get more corn per man em- 

 ployed than the inefficient farmer, could afford to pay higher wages 

 for his help. The poorer farmer would be crowded to the wall just 

 as definitely as he is now. He would find it just as hard to pay these 

 high prices for farm land, and high wages for farm labor, and high 

 prices for farm machinery, out of the receipts of his two dollar corn 

 as he has in normal times to pay the lower prices or the lower rents, 

 wages, etc., out of his receipts from one dollar corn. Of course, the 



