102 AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



bought more land, not only for themselves but sometimes also for their 



sons. 29 



Land prices began to rise as early as 1915 and continued the upward 

 spiral until 1920. For the country as a whole, the price of land was up 40 

 per cent by the end of the year 1918 and up 70 per cent by the end of 1919, 

 the worst year of the boom. Corn land, especially in Iowa and Illinois, 

 made the most fantastic advances. In the former state the average price 

 per acre had been $82.58 in 1910, but by 1920 it was $199.52; in Illinois 

 during the same period, the rise was from $95.02 to $i64.2o. 30 Many in- 

 dividual purchases quite exceeded these figures. "lowans believe," wrote 

 one optimist in 1919, "that land is going higher, and that it can never be 

 bought cheaper than at present. They buy therefore to avoid paying a 

 higher price later on. They say there is but one corn belt to grow corn 

 and hogs and the demand for these products is increasing and will con- 

 tinue to increase." 31 Inspired by such beliefs, purchasers paid as high as 

 $300 or $400 an acre for some Iowa land and occasionally even $500. "Ex- 

 perts" were available to defend such prices as entirely reasonable. They 

 maintained, with fair plausibility, that the price of land had been going 

 up ever since the disappearance of the frontier and was bound to go up 

 further. Corn land, they claimed, had risen during the past about $2 per 

 acre for every cent of increase in the price of corn. Thus, in 1890 when 

 corn brought 20 cents a bushel, corn land had sold for $30 an acre; in 

 1913, when corn brought 55 cents a bushel, the land that produced it had 

 sold for $100 an acre; hence, they argued, with prices at $i a bushel, the 

 land should bring $190 per acre. 32 



To a very great extent the land boom, and the farmers' prosperity in 

 general, was financed by rural banks. Loans from the Federal Farm Loan 

 System were available, with rates of interest perhaps .5 per cent lower 



29. Iowa Yearbool{ of Agriculture, 1919, p. 582; Woodruff, Farm Mortgage 

 Loans, p. 22; L. C. Gray and O. G. Lloyd, Farm Land Values in Iowa, U. S. Dept. 

 Agri., Bulletin 874 (Washington, 1920), p. 15. 



30. Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1923, p. 140. 



31. Iowa Yearboo^ of Agriculture, 1919, p. 583. 



32. I. W. Wright, Farm Mortgage Financing (New York, 1923), pp. 9-13; John 

 D. Black, Agricultural Reform in the United States (New York, 1929), p. 21; Freida 

 Baird and Claude L. Benner, Ten Years of Federal Intermediate Credits (Wash- 

 ington, 1933), p. 29. 



