9 AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



less unanticipated activities. Now and then a warning voice pointed out 

 the dangers of such fundamental changes to meet a merely temporary 

 emergency, but for the most part the food producers of America acted as 

 if the changes made during the war would be permanent and gave little 

 thought to the complications that were sure to arise when peace was 

 restored. 7 



The entrance of the United States into the war speeded up tremendously 

 the already abnormal demand for intensive food production. Assured by 

 official propaganda that food would "win the war," farmers planted maxi- 

 mum crops and even brought into production much marginal or semi- 

 marginal land land that in normal times would not have been worked 

 at all. According to one estimate, not fewer than 45,000,000 acres of new 

 land were so opened up during the war decade. The policy of the govern- 

 ment was to stimulate production, regardless of the consequences. With 

 only a few exceptions, prices were allowed to rise in response to the 

 pyramiding demand, and in addition to the incentive of high prices, 

 government pamphleteers and publicists bombarded the farmers with 

 appeals for greater production on patriotic grounds. With reasonably 

 good weather conditions and the certainty of inflated prices, production 

 went up amazingly. The average annual value of the American farm out- 

 put from 1910 to 1914 was about six billion dollars, but by 1917 the take 

 was thirteen billions, over fourteen billions by 1918, and nearly sixteen 

 billions by 1919. For a year and a half after the end of the war the wave 

 of farm prosperity continued. The obligation to feed the Allies had ceased, 

 but the demands of war-ravaged Europe for American foodstuffs con- 

 tinued. And the productive powers of the American farmer remained 

 intact. 8 



The greatest single crop demand on the United States was for wheat. 

 In a sense this was nothing new, for heavy wheat shipments from the 

 United States to Europe, particularly to England, were normal. Since the 



7. A. B. Genung, "Agriculture in the World War Period," U. S. Dept. Agri. 

 Yearbook, Farmers in a Changing World (Washington, 1940), pp. 278-80. 



8. E. T. Meredith, "Report of the Secretary of Agriculture," U. S. Dept. Agri., 

 Yearbool^, 1916, p. 17; G. E. Mo wry, "The Decline of Agriculture, 1920-1924, A 

 Study in Economics and Politics" (unpublished master's thesis, University of Wis- 

 consin, 1934), p. 6; Edwin G. Nourse, Government in Relation to Agriculture 

 (Washington, 1940), p. 879; Wallaces' Farmer, XLII (April 6, 1917), p. 604. 



