35 



THE FARMER'S INCOME. 



The fact that the group of States where industry Is most diversified (those 

 having only 18 per cent, of all workers engaged in agriculture) afford $457 per 

 annum to each one, while the agricultural States, having 77 per cent, in agricult- 

 ure, allow an annual income of only $160, is too significant to be explained away, 

 too convincing for pretense of cavil. It stands as proof of the necessity of sym- 

 metry and completeness of the productive system, and as a forceful illustration 

 of the solidarity of the industries. 



Full acceptance of the truth that increase of non-agricultural w orkers enhances 

 values in agriculture, as proven by this grouping of facts, has been nearly uni- 

 versal. 



2. It increases the value of production. In the early days of the infancy of our 

 manufactures, within the recollection of persons of middle age, wheat has been 

 splfl for less than 40 cents per bushel. There was a surplus for which there was 

 little demand, because nearly every head of a family produced his own supply. 

 Sixty years ago the price of our wheat exports at the place of shipment was but 

 70 cents per bushel, and it required eighty-eight bushels of that wheat to pay for 

 a ton of pig-iron imported the same year. Last year twenty-five bushels o 

 wheat would pay for a ton of pig-iroa of our own manufacture, and yet we are 

 told that farmers are ruined by the tariff on iron. The reason of this great differ- 

 ence is found in the fact that between four and five million tons of pig-iron ar& 

 now made annually in the United States, or more than ten times as much as was 

 produced in Great Britain sixty years ago, and more than was made there in any 

 year prior to 1863. 



Take a notable example of the crushing weight of overproduction upon pi ice. 

 Not many years ago, when cotton was worth 23 cents per pound, the planting 

 returns disclosed the fact, in June, that one-third increase in area had been made . 

 I at once predicted that with a season favoring an average yield per acre the 

 price of middling cotton would in six months fall to 15 cents. The increase was 

 more than a million bales and the average price of the crop was a fraction less 

 than 15 cents, and brought to the growers $45,000,000 less than the smaller pre- 

 vious crop. They realized, too, that all of their extra labor had been thrown 

 away, besides a heavy loss in addition, With no money-producing crop but 

 cotton and no employment for idle labor in other productive industry, it is not 

 strange that discouragement was disheartening and poverty imminent. 



Again recurring to unpublished results of the Census of 1880, a striking illus- 

 influences of manufactures on the profits of agriculture is pre- 



tration of the 



sented. The census returns the value of the products of agriculture reported 

 on its schedules. Comparing the average value of production for each person 

 (farm or farm laborer) engaged in rural industry, we have $431 for Pennsylva- 



nia, and $180 for Virginia ; $394 for Ohio, and $199 for Kentucky; $467 in Illinois, 

 and $376 in Minnesota. Dividing again the States and Territories into four sec- 

 tions, the first comprising the manufacturing and mining areas, and includ- 

 ing all having a smaller proportion than 30 per cent, of the occupied popu- 

 lation, the working class, engaged in agricultural employments ; the second 

 section comprising all States having more than 30 and under 50 per C3nt. ; the 

 third including all States having 50 and not exceeding 70 per cent., and the 

 fourth including all States having more than 70 per cent, engaged in agriculture, 

 we have the following perfectly natural, not to say inevitable, results, namely : 



Here again we see the product per man go down as the percentage of agricult- 

 ural workers goes up. We see that in the manufacturing States 1,060, 681 agri- 

 culturists get $484,770,797 per annum for their labor, while in the agricultural 

 States 2,024,966 receive only $325,099,388. New Jersey has but 14.92 per cent, in 

 agriculture, and each man earns $501, while Mississippi has 81.81 per cent., the 

 largest proportion of any State, and each person earns but $187, the lowest aveiv 

 age in the United States. 



