14. THE FARMER OF TO-MORROW 



He was figuring on dollar wheat, sixty-cent 

 corn, and ten-cent hogs. 



All his land nominally in farm was real 



/ 



farm. It was mellow prairie loam, the mold 

 of centuries, from fifteen to one hundred feet 

 deep. It was rich, and ripe for skinning 

 one hundred acres of it. 



The average farmer ought to consider his 

 plant above the average of his State. But the 

 willow-bank farmer would figure himself be- 

 low. He would even throw off seven dollars 

 and forty-four cents and four mills and call 

 it an even fifteen thousand dollars. 



One hundred and fifty dollars an acre! 



Jeremiah untied his livery horse and assisted 

 Mary to her seat, and they drove slowly back 

 to town, leaving the willow-bank farmer 

 tinkering over a new gasoline thrashing outfit. 

 They remembered having read somewhere that 

 Dean Liberty H. Bailey, of the lamented 

 Country Life Commission, had said that the 

 back-to-the-land movement was an economic 

 fallacy. But they remembered this only for 

 the moment. Economic fallacies have to do 

 with masses, not individuals. If the willow- 

 bank farmer could buy automobiles and wear 

 green shutters on his house, Jeremiah and 



