economic crisis quite as catastrophic in its way 

 as famine. There was no one so poor as the 

 farmer, nothing so cheap as corn, except hogs 

 on the hoof, and grain became fuel. In the 

 few decades following the Civil War, agricul- 

 ture had emerged from its pastoral stage 

 wherein each community had been sufficient 

 unto itself. A contagion of railroad building 

 cut up the prairies, bringing world markets, 

 exchange, and perplexing wants into a region 

 which heretofore had been its own butcher, 

 baker and candle-stick maker. This period of 

 too much land, too much food, and over- 

 development in transportation that glutted 

 the world market, brought about a decline in 

 values which did not reach its low ebb until 

 as late as 1896. In this connection it is worthy 

 of note that, when a British railroad com- 

 mission recently reported to its government on 

 American Railroading, it explained the ef- 

 ficiency of our railroads as being due to the 

 penny-pinching attention to details which grew 

 out of receiverships. Practically all our great 

 railroad systems of the present day are the 

 reconstruction of the bankruptcies of the late 

 'eighties and early 'nineties. 



It was then that our Jeremiahs, relics of a 



