474 AGRICULTURE. 



1870. 



Total value of taxed and untaxed property . $30,000,000,000 



Assessed value of property 15,350,000,000 



Of which the farmers were assessed . . . 12,500,000,000 



I88o. 



Total value of taxed and untaxed property . $43,500,000,000 



Assessed value of property 17,000,000,000 



Of which the farmers were assessed . . . 14,000,000,000 



" In 1850 the farmers of the United States owned 70 per cent of the total 

 wealth of the country, and paid 85 per cent of its taxes. In 1860 they owned 

 half the wealth of the country, and they paid 87 per cent of its taxes. In 

 1880 they owned only one-fourth of the wealth of the country. The increase 

 in their farm values, during the twenty years from 1860 to 1880, had dropped 

 from 10 1 per cent to only 9 per cent, and yet, in this desperately reduced and 

 weakened condition, they paid 80 per cent of the taxes of the country. 



" Mr. Chairman, is the agricultural interest of the country depressed? And 

 is it due to a want of energy, of industry, and of economy, on the part of the 

 farmer? All over the country, he has been told for years, by a certain school 

 of political economists, that indolence, inattention to business, and extrava- 

 gance were the prime causes of his increasing poverty. But when he comes 

 to the capitol of the nation, venerable Senators and prominent government 

 officials inform him that his financial ruin has been wrought through his 

 industry and the merciful providence of nature's God ; that he is absolutely 

 bowed to the earth under a crushing load of overproduction. Are either of 

 his advisers correct? In answer to the first, I assert, without hesitation, that 

 no class of citizens in our country work so hard, live so hard, and receive so 

 little reward for their labor, as the average American farmer. In answer to 

 the second, I ask : Overproduction in what ? Is it in breadstuffs ? We pro- 

 duced 9} bushels of wheat, per capita, in 1888, which was worth $ 1.15 cents 

 per bushel. We produced, in 1889, only 7^ bushels per capita, and it was 

 worth only 79 cents per bushel. Our exports of food products, under proper 

 and just conditions, should be the true measure of our production. But is it 

 so? The normal ration of flour, as established by our government, and which 

 has been kindly furnished me by the Secretary of War, is i^ pounds per day, 

 or 410 pounds per year. Assuming that our population numbers 65,000,000, 

 to give each one a normal ration would require 26,650,000,000 pounds, whereas 

 we produced last year (deducting 56,000,000 bushels for seed), only 17,282,- 

 400,000 pounds, a deficit of 7,267,600,000 pounds. But if our population 

 had consumed 2} ounces per day, per capita, more than they did consume, 

 nothing would have remained for export. Will any sane man doubt, with our 

 millions of people in our crowded cities, in our towns, in our mines, and all 

 over the land, in their hovels of poverty, who are existing in a state of semi- 

 starvation, that we could have consumed this additional pittance? And if the 

 ruinous decline in prices be due to overproduction, why should it not be con- 

 fined to those commodities for which a surplus is claimed? Why should all 



