86 ECONOMIC CONDITION OF THE FARMER 



giving him a team and his renting 80 acres of land. In 1901 he was married. 

 He continued to rent land, giving to the landlord one-third of the crop raised 

 on the land until 1905 when he purchased 160 acres of land at $60 per acre, 

 making a payment of $3,000 at the time of the purchase with a promise to pay 

 $500 per year and interest. He moved onto this farm and erected good build- 

 ings during the next 3 years besides making payment of his $500 each year 

 and interest. In 1908 he traded this land for a half section of land, turning 

 this farm in at $125 per acre and taking the other land at $120 per acre. Last 

 January he refused $48,000 for this land. He has an encumbrance of $16,000 

 against it. He also has a short horn cattle herd of 65 head, 16 horses, 50 or 60 

 head of hogs, full equipment of farm machinery, with seed grain and feed to 

 carry him more than one year, in the grainery. Mr. Schimmel has the equiva- 

 lent of at least $40,000, and all of this has been the outgrowth of his fanning 

 operations in 14 years, some of which have been lean years." 



Best Practices Popularized. A somewhat similar situation 

 was described by Bradford Knapp while with the Department of 

 Agriculture. Speaking before the First Annual Conference of the 

 Bankers Committees on Agricultural Development and Education 

 at Minneapolis in 1911, he said: 



"The great problem of to-day is the dissemination of existing knowledge. 

 That is true not only of agriculture but of almost every other human endeavor. 

 If the existing knowledge with regard to human health were known and com- 

 monly practiced by the people generally, the ills of the human body would be 

 much decreased. If the knowledge that is in existence in every state in the 

 tlnion with regard to the best and most successful methods of conduct of 

 farms were to become the common practice of the average farmer, the agri- 

 culture of this country would be revolutionized. In every community, in 

 every county, in every state, you will find farmers who are making a distinct 

 success of the business of farming. Also in every community you will find men 

 who are merely scratching the surface of Mother Earth for a very poor exist- 

 ence. It is a lamentable fact that the best practices of a few are not the 

 common practices of many. In every community we find farmers of poorer 

 grade who are pulling down the average production per acre, and therefore 

 whose return for their labor is very low indeed. It would astonish you if 

 you were to look into figures and find out what the average earning capacity 

 of the average farm worker of this country in the various states is or was. 

 We found the figures for the year 1900, I cannot give you the exact statistics 

 for 1910 yet, because the Census Bureau has not published the total number 

 of farm workers, but I can give you a few figures for the year 1900; for example 

 in the state of South Carolina the average earning capacity of the average 

 farm worker was but $146 per annum. In the state of Iowa in that year, not 

 including the livestock industry of that state, it was a trifle over $600 per 

 annum, and in North Dakota for that year it was a little over $700 per annum. 



"It is a well known fact and appreciated by all thinking men, that the 

 population of the country has practically stood still, or advanced very little, 

 while the population of our cities and towns of over two thousand population 

 have increased enormously simply because men have been going from the farms 

 to the cities. The great cities and centers of population have paid tribute to 

 the best blood that has been upon the farm. Without going into the figures 

 to show these things, and without commenting upon the statistics which could 

 be produced, it is a lamentable fact that this tendency exists to-day, and has 

 existed in this country for the past twenty years. 



"If you were to ask me why this thing has been I would say it was for 

 three reasons. 



