122 THE FOOD CRISIS AND AMERICANISM 



the most perplexing economic questions would never 

 have been raised, and in case they had, would have 

 speedily furnished their own answer, but as I have 

 shown, these things are not true ; that on the contrary, 

 the farm mortgage indebtedness has not only during 

 all these years been increasing at an enormous rate, 

 without anything like an adequate increase in the farm- 

 ers' assets, but at the same time there has been an 

 almost constant decrease in the number of men on the 

 farms to meet this indebtedness; that the increased 

 acreage yield of cereals, if any at all, is more than 

 accounted for by the abandonment of worn-out lands 

 and the bringing of new lands into cultivation. 

 Though only between one and two bushels less than the 

 average, the winter wheat yield for 1916 was the low- 

 est in twenty-five years or more, 12.2 bushels per acre. 

 I have suggested that the large number of people 

 speculating in farm lands has a great deal to do with 

 the matter, especially in the suppressing of unfavorable 

 facts. Two recent news items suggest a source of this 

 misinformation, if not mal-information, which, in my 

 opinion, exceeds all others. Two editors were aspir- 

 ing for the same high office. One accused the other 

 of publishing as news items speciously written arti- 

 cles, prepared by large commercial interests and in- 

 tended to mislead and divert attention from their enor- 

 mous profits. From the controversy between these 

 two, it would seem that that sort of perversion of the 

 news columns for profit was not unusual, but on the 

 contrary quite common. The other was in an article 

 written by Mr. Frank Stockbridge, entitled " Edward 

 A. Rumely, Man Who Bought the New York Mail 



