14 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



that the general condition of business would follow rather closely 

 the changes in the country's crops, one can see that such a 

 generalization is only safe when rigidly qualified and carefully 

 applied. One must bear in mind not only that the condition of 

 the crops elsewhere will always affect the value of our domestic 

 crops, whatever may have been their size, but also that other 

 conditions, such as changes in financial legislation, passed or 

 impending, may outweigh all of the influences of agriculture upon 

 business ; and, finally, one must remember that in a country as 

 extensive as ours the effect of success or failure with any one kind 

 of crop may always be largely offset by an opposite condition with 

 some of the other crops, 



III 



Confronted with the evidence that our several crops do not 

 always succeed or fail in the same seasons, one naturally asks 

 which of the crops it is whose success or failure exerts the greater 

 influence over the conditions of general business. This is a 

 question the solution of which is so difficult and involves the 

 disentanglement of so many interacting factors that no one is 

 competent to offer for it anything more decisive than a personal 

 belief, and the best we can do here is to recall some of the points 

 of view, most of them already mentioned, which must form the 

 basis of that belief. 



At first glance one might suppose that the crop which is most 

 extensive, or at any rate which is most valuable, would be the one 

 which is most influential for general business. And that would be 

 the corn crop. Of all the industries prosecuted in this country 

 the most considerable by far, measured by the value of its output, 

 is corn-growing. Corn is our leading product, not only when we 

 are speaking of agriculture, but also when we include every kind 

 of production. Our leading crops in the year 1905, according to 

 the estimates of the Secretary of Agriculture,^ ranked as follows : 



^ The estimates are those made at the end of the year in question. These 

 estimates are always changed more or less before the annual volume is published, 

 and at times even subsequent to its issue. They are at best, as are all of the 

 figures in this paper, only estimates, derived from multifarious sources, and liable 

 to large errors. 



