REGION OF DISCONTENT 23 



far greater in some of the states of the western Middle West: Wisconsin, 

 71.9; Minnesota, 82.2; Illinois, 104.1; Missouri, 107.9; I wa > 123.0; Kansas, 

 189.0; Nebraska, 231.8; North Dakota, 321.3; and South Dakota, 377-I. 41 

 Numerous records of land sales backed up the census figures. Iowa lands 

 that sold at from $10 to $30 an acre thirty years before were selling in 1908 

 at from $80 to $125. Lands six miles distant from a railroad that were 

 worth only $3 to $5 an acre in the 1870'$, and from $25 to $30 an acre in the 

 i88o's, brought from $135 to $155 an acre in 1910. Farmers who had been 

 able to hold onto their farms had thus accumulated wealth at a rapid rate, 

 not so much from the prices for which farm products sold as from the 

 rapidly appreciating value of the acres they owned. Mortgages that had 

 occasioned the greatest anxiety a few years earlier could now be regarded 

 as negligible. Whether he realized it or not, the average middle western 

 landowner had made his money not so much from good farming as from 

 the unearned increment that came with the ownership of farm lands. To 

 a considerable extent, he was only a successful speculator. 42 



Explanations for the rise in land values were as varied as those which 

 were advanced to explain the rising prices paid for farm products. Higher 

 prices for grain, livestock, and dairy produce would of course tend nat- 

 urally to boost land prices, but the increase in value of farm lands had 

 quite outrun the increase in price of farm products. Nor could the rising 

 price of land be ascribed to its increased productivity, for in spite of the 

 best efforts of the proponents of scientific agriculture, the yield per acre 

 had risen at best only a very little. Much was made of the supposed "dis- 

 appearance of free land" on the theory that the supply of available land 

 was being cut down just when the demand for it was greatest. Actually, 

 there was much free land then available in the arid west, and a good deal 

 of it was being taken up by homesteaders. 43 But lands that required expen- 

 sive irrigation works to make them productive were hardly "free," while 

 unirrigated lands were a bad gamble for most pioneers. Probably the de- 

 mand for land really was up and the supply of good land down. Farms 



41. Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910, Vol. V, Agriculture, pp. 28, 79, 

 and plate facing p. 44; Senate Document 705, 60 Congress, 2 session, p. 20. 



42. Wallaces' Farmer XXXIII (September 4, 1908), p. 1061; XXXIV (December 

 31, 1909), p. 1704; XXXV (March 4, 1910), p. 369. 



43. Fred A. Shannon, "The Homestead Act and the Labor Surplus," American 

 Historical Review, XLI (luly, 1936), pp. 637-51. 



