THE PLIGHT OF THE FARMER 105 



the farm, cattle, hay, and hogs alone maintained 

 the price level of the decade prior to 1892. Aver- 

 age prices, moreover, do not fully indicate the 

 small return which many farmers received. In De- 

 cember, 1891, for instance, the average value of a 

 bushel of corn was about forty cents, but in Ne- 

 braska, on January 1, 1892, corn brought only 

 twenty-six cents. When, a few years later, corn 

 was worth, according to the statistics, just over 

 twenty-one cents, it was literally cheaper to burn it 

 in Kansas or Nebraska than to cart it to town, sell 

 it, and buy coal with the money received; and this 

 is just what hundreds of despairing farmers did. 

 Even crop shortage did little to increase the price of 

 the grain that was raised. When a drought seri- 

 ously diminished the returns in Ohio, Indiana, and 

 Michigan in 1895, the importation from States 

 farther west prevented any rise in price. 



Prices dropped, but the interest on mortgages re- 

 mained the same. One hundred and seventy-four 

 bushels of wheat would pay the interest at 8 per 

 cent on a $2000 mortgage in 1888, when the price of 

 wheat was higher than it had been for ten years and 

 higher than it was to be again for a dozen years. In 

 1894 or 1895 when the price was hovering around 

 fifty cents, it took 320 bushels to pay the same 



