28 THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 



as a result of the scarcity of labor and the need of something 

 to take the place of the men who were in the army. 1 The 

 machines enabled one man to do the work which had formerly 

 been done by many and thus helped to increase the surplus popu- 

 lation after the war closed. They made possible the cultiva- 

 tion of the staple crops on a large scale in the new western lands, 

 the result being a thin settlement spread over an extensive 

 area but producing large crops per capita. 2 This tendency 

 was carried to an extreme in the so-called bonanza farms, against 

 which there was bitter complaint. Large tracts of land were 

 obtained by capitalists and converted into industrial plants 

 for the production of wheat and corn. By means of machinery, 

 operated by gangs of hired labor, and with large-scale production, 

 great crops were produced at a minimum of cost; and when, 

 as is said to have been the case in some instances, special favors 

 were received from the railroads in transportation, it is easily 

 seen that this competition was a real injury to the individual 

 farmer producing crops on a small scale. 3 There was also techni- 

 cal advance in agricultural science in other ways, as is illustrated 

 by the increasing application of commercial fertilizers to the 

 cotton fields of the South, which made possible a considerable 

 expansion of the area of the cotton belt in the older states at 

 the same time that new cotton lands were being developed in 

 Texas. 4 



The effect of all these combined causes in producing a great 

 increase in agricultural operations in the staple crops, together 

 with a corresponding decrease in prices, can be seen from the 

 following tables which show* the acreage, production, total 

 value, and average annual price of the corn, wheat, and cotton 

 crops in the United States from 1866 to 1880 inclusive. 5 



1 Fite, Social and Industrial Conditions in the North during the Civil War, 6-9. 



2 H. W. Quaintance, The Influence of Farm Machinery on Production and Labor; 

 Moody, Land and Labor, 9-30. 



3 Ibid. 31-87; Elliot, American Farms, 33-57, 78-89. 



4 M. B. Hammond, The Cotton Industry, 123. 



6 The statistics of acreage, production, and value given in these tables are 

 taken from United States Department of Agriculture, Yearbook, 1897, pp. 710, 712. 

 The price figures are computed from the total production and value. The values 



