732 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



2. Concurrently with an increase in the supply of the products 

 of the field, the progress of invention has tended in certain re-| 

 spects to curtail demand for them. Such animal products as tallow 

 and grease, for example, have been largely displaced for lighting 

 purposes by the mineral products, petroleum and coal. Red dye, 

 once obtained from a vegetable, is now derived from the prod- 

 uct of a mineral. Wood first gave way to coal for purposes of 

 combustion, and then to iron and steel as materials for construc- 

 tion. The utilization of cotton-seed oil in the production of lard 

 and its substitution for tallow and grease in the manufacture 

 of soap have unfavorably affected the prices of hogs and cattle. 

 Cocoa oil has also come to be largely employed in making soap ; 

 and the large importation of this oil is at once the measure of 

 the popularity of the soaps into which it enters and of its own 

 depressing influence upon the prices of cattle and hogs, the by- 

 products of which it displaces. One of the most striking examples, 

 however, is the substitution of electricity for horses as the motive 

 power in the street-railway service, thereby diminishing not only 

 the value of horses, but also that of all kinds of feed and forage. 



It has been estimated that electric lines have already displaced no less than 

 275,000 horses. ... At a moderate computation this number of horses would 

 require about 125,000 bushels of corn or oats a day. A decrease of 125,000 

 bushels a day is equal to 45,000,000 bushels a year, enough to appreciably 

 affect the prices of those grains. 



The bicycle has exerted a similar influence. Its worst effects 

 have probably appeared in the horse and carriage trades, and 

 allied businesses. " The practice of horseback riding is nearly 

 extinct, and saddle horses are a drug in the market." 



3. The dependence of agricultural profits upon the uncer-/ 

 tainty of the weather is another of the unfavorable conditions j 

 with which the farmer must contend. With the disastrous con- ' 

 sequences of crop failure we are already familiar. But nature 

 frequently, though not as disastrously, interferes with the farmer's 

 prospects by rewarding his labors with an over-abundant harvest. 

 The corn crop of 1885, for example, though only slightly 

 greater in area than that of 1887, was nearly 500,000,000 

 bushels greater in yield, while the aggregate money value was 



