100 AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



urged the farmers to plan accordingly. If the descent down the price ladder 

 could be made "a rung at a time," this sagacious observer was sure that 

 all would be well. Otherwise, he feared, "someone will get pushed off." 

 High war wages for labor, together with high prices for manufactured 

 goods and high prices for agricultural produce, he argued, must all come 

 down together. Certainly the farmer ought not to bear the first full brunt 

 of price reductions all alone. In actual fact, except for a flurry of excite- 

 ment at the time of the unexpectedly early armistice, prices remained 

 good on most farm commodities throughout 1919 and on into 1920. The 

 price of wheat was supported by law until May 31, 1920, but such guar- 

 antees as were given on hog prices were removed in the spring of 1919 

 without a serious price break. Hog prices averaged over $18 per hundred- 

 weight throughout the year 1919 and $14 in 1920. But by 1921 the average 

 was only a little over $8. 26 



By this time the boom was over and the long depression in agriculture 

 had begun. Beginning slowly in June, hard on the disappearance of the 

 government guarantee on wheat, the descent down the price ladder 

 gathered momentum as the season's abundant crops poured on the mar- 

 ket. By November i, 1920, farm prices were 33 per cent lower than the 

 level of the previous year; by the next midsummer, they were down 85 

 per cent. On the other hand, the prices of what the farmer had to buy 

 showed no such changes. According to one estimate, a given volume of 

 farm produce would buy only 75 per cent as much in 1921 as it would 

 in 1914. Individual items showed an even greater disparity. In 1919 one- 

 fifth of a bushel of corn would buy a gallon of gasoline, but in 1921 the 

 price equivalent was two bushels of corn. In 1919 six bushels of corn would 

 buy a ton of coal, but in 1921 it took sixty bushels. The average price paid 

 to the Nebraska producer for his corn in November, 1921, was twenty-five 

 cents a bushel and prices as low as eleven cents were on record. Under 

 these circumstances it was cheaper to burn corn for fuel than to buy coal, 

 and many farmers did exactly that. Throughout the twenties and on into 

 the thirties the farmers' travail continued. Rural standards of living went 

 down, and many farmers, either from choice or from necessity, gave up 



26. Ibid., XLIV (January 17, 1919), p. 112; (January 24, 1919), p. 185; (March 

 14, 1919), p. 701; Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1923, p. 163. 



