752 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



turn must pay for articles which either enter into the personal 

 consumption of himself and family or are used in the process of 

 production. A comparative study of the fluctuations in the prices 

 of agricultural products and of commodities in general between 

 1840 and 1891 reveals several important facts: 



First, there have been three periods during which the average 

 of agricultural prices has ruled lower than that of general prices : 

 1840-1853, 1876-1880, 1883-1890. During the intervening 

 periods agricultural prices ranged relatively high. From 1840 to 

 1853 the general average of agricultural prices ranged lower 

 than at any other time in fifty-two years. In Ohio three-year-old 

 ox teams, well matched and well broken, sold in 1842-1846 for 

 $24 to $30; in 1850, nice lambs weighing forty pounds sold for 

 56 cents per head, four-year-old steers for $15, dressed pork at 

 $1.50 per hundredweight, cheese at 4 to 4^ cents per pound, 

 wheat at 25 to 30 cents, and oats at 10 to 15 cents per bushel. 



Second, with the exception of 1860-1865, a sympathetic re- 

 lationship is found to exist between general and agricultural 

 prices. As a rule, when the farmer received low prices for his 

 produce, he paid low prices in turn for the articles he bought. 

 This is well illustrated by the tendency of prices of farm ma- 

 chinery to move downward in company with the price of farm 

 produce. Thus, it has been shown that the number of bushels 

 of wheat, corn, or oats required to pay for a list of ordinary farm 

 implements, including a binder, a mower, a two-horse cultivator, 

 and a wagon was less in 1889 than in 1873. The report of the 

 Pennsylvania Bureau of Industrial Statistics for 1890 shows that 

 in Chester County the average decline of wheat from 1880-1881 

 to 1889-1890 was 29.1 per cent; of corn, 16.9 per cent; of 

 oats, 15.4 per cent. 



During the same time the decline in the more costly farm machinery . . . 

 was 33.9 percent; in the lesser farm implements, such as shovels, rakes, hoes, 

 scythes, and pitchforks, 26 per cent ; and the average rate of decline in ten 

 selected articles of staple use, such as sugars, tea, coffee, salt, and standard 

 cottons, calicoes, ginghams, and coarse boots, was 15.3 per cent. 



Third, the economic condition of any particular farmer de- 

 pends largely upon the kinds of commodities he produces, and 



