44 THE FARMER OF TO-MORROW 



but in the latter year he was paid only a little 

 more than fifty cents on the dollar for his 

 pains. During the next ten years the nearest 

 he came to a decent living was in 1891, when 

 an acre of food was worth $11.78, thanks to 

 drought. Five years later his fortunes had 

 sagged until they touched the low water mark, 

 with returns of only $7.94. That sum scarcely 

 repaid the farmer for the labor of sowing and 

 reaping; and if he considered such a thing as 

 land being capital in those days, and the rent 

 which capital exacts even before labor is paid, 

 he would have had nothing for his labor. 



But we began to grow hungrier again about 

 the time of the Spanish- American War. The 

 tariff, with its artificial stimulus to production 

 in the arts, was beginning to work smoothly; 

 manufactures (in which capital confiscated 

 the subsidy that had been laid in the name of 

 labor) began to flourish; the Jeremiahs re- 

 treated from the farms and those who stayed 

 had to fight bugs, blight and fungus diseases, 

 the growing pains of new land; the tide of 

 immigration from southern Europe people 

 who did not know how to farm and did not 

 want to learn turned toward flood. Food 

 and hunger began to run parallel again, and 



