FUNDAMENTAL CONDITIONS 7 



brought in money, and in addition the influence of the merchant 

 to whom he was indebted was usually exerted to induce him 

 to produce as much cotton as possible with which to pay off 

 the accumulated debt and purchase new supplies. As a result 

 of this and other factors, there was an over-production of cotton, 

 which led to a rapid decline in prices, and often the value of 

 a farmer's crop grew less and less in spite of its increase in quan- 

 tity. This devotion to cotton meant also a neglect of corn and 

 meat raising and a consequent necessity for the purchase of 

 additional supplies through the medium of the merchant and 

 the omnivorous credit system. 1 From all these causes southern 

 agriculture was far from flourishing in the reconstruction period. 



The great prairie states of the upper Mississippi Valley, 

 stretching from Ohio to the edge of settlement in Kansas and 

 Nebraska, were also producers of staples, but here the staples 

 were the cereal crops of wheat and corn. This section was the 

 center of agricultural discontent during the period with which 

 we are dealing, and it was here that the protective movement 

 among the farmers manifested itself most vigorously. The 

 farmers in this area were from the first handicapped by the 

 notion that they were to make their fortunes by raising wheat, 

 and for a long time were unable to grasp the fact that conditions 

 of soil, climate, and market facilities demanded a change from 

 the shiftless and ruinous one-crop method to a more intensive 

 and diversified agriculture. The states of the upper Mississippi 

 Valley were experiencing the same conditions which had been 

 faced in western New York a generation or so earlier; but here 

 the farmers seemed determined to resist the westward tendency 

 of the wheat industry, and for a long time refused to turn their 

 attention to the now more profitable stock raising and dairy 

 farming. 2 



Even as early as the fifties the farmers of Illinois and Wis- 

 consin were feeling the depression in the wheat industry and 



1 M. B. Hammond, " The Southern Farmer and the Cotton Question," in 

 Political Science Quarterly, xi. 450-475; Otken, Ills of the South, chs. iv, vii; Na- 

 tional Grange, Proceedings, ix. 60-63 (November, 1875). 



2 See B. H. Hibbard, The History of Agriculture in Dane County, Wisconsin 

 121-134, for an excellent account of the one-crop period and its results. 



