io8 



AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



Horses and mules on many farms, and for that matter in the cities also, 

 were being replaced in considerable part by tractors, trucks, and auto- 

 mobiles. Acreage previously required to raise hay and oats for draft ani- 

 mals was increasingly set free for other purposes. It was estimated in 

 1929 that not less than twenty million acres had thus been made available 

 for the production of food crops. But the farmer had to buy both the 

 trucks and tractors and the gasoline or kerosene to run them. He also, 

 unless he expanded the number of his cattle and hogs, lost the natural 

 fertilizer that his draft stock had produced and had to depend more and 

 more on expensive commercial fertilizer. Better methods of farming, 

 better breeds of livestock, better types of seed grain, and more attention to 

 diversification all preached persistently by the Department of Agricul- 

 ture and the state colleges of agriculture might bring an increase in 

 agricultural production, but for even his best efforts the farmer seemed 

 to be only worse ofT financially each suceeding year. 42 



An economist divided the farmers who failed in the postwar depression 

 into four groups. 43 First, there was the farmer, usually a young man, who 

 purchased his land, livestock, and equipment at the high price prevailing 

 during the years 1918 to 1920. He had to pay the penalty for misjudging 

 prices. A second group consisted of farmers who purchased cattle, sheep, 

 and hogs for feeding purposes early in 1920. These farmers fed to their 

 livestock grain which they might instead have sold for a high price. A 

 third group, principally the farmers of North and South Dakota and 

 certain sections of Minnesota and Montana, failed because of their one- 

 crop systems and their frequent short crops. Many of these farmers had 

 taken up wheat raising under the stimulus of high wartime prices. The 

 land upon which they farmed was often marginal and would have re- 

 quired the talents of the most efficient farmers to produce good crops. 

 Montana's heavy proportion of failure was, in part, a reflection of misfits' 

 attempting to farm nonagricultural and marginal lands. In the areas of 

 heaviest failure in that state, 51 per cent of those who went on the land 



42. Seligman, Economics of Farm Relief, pp. 20-22; Nourse, Government in Rela- 

 tion to Agriculture, p. 881; Baker, in Annals of the American Academy, CXLII 

 (March, 1929), p. 117. 



43. David Friday, "The Course of Agricultural Income during the Last Twenty- 

 Five Years," American Economic Review, Supplement, XIII (March, 1923), pp. 

 156-57. 



