THE PROBLEM OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 71 



beginning to ship abroad high-grade fruit and first-class dairy 

 products in considerable quantities. Low rates of freight, modern 

 methods of refrigeration, express freight trains, fast freight steamers 

 the whole machinery of the commercial and financial world are at the 

 service of the new farmer. 



17. WHERE THE PRINCIPLE OF EXCHANGE-PRODUCTION 

 HAS BEEN ABUSED 1 



BY MRS. G. H. MATHIS 



There is nothing on the face of the. earth, in our climate or in our 

 soil, that forces Alabama into a one-crop system. We can grow any- 

 thing that will grow in the temperate zone. But still we do a whole 

 lot of nonsensical things; we just get right in our own way and keep 

 a-standing there. In the first place, we send here to St. Louis, Chicago, 

 and Kansas City, and we buy meat, ham, breakfast bacon, and all 

 sorts of hog meat, and we pay anywhere from 12 to 30 cents a pound, 

 and we can grow all we want at 2\ cents. It is a fact; get our agri- 

 cultural bulletins and see that we can. And we send and buy beef 

 and we pay all sorts of prices for it, 10, 20, and sometimes 40 cents a 

 pound, and we can grow that same beef at 4 cents or less. And then 

 we send out West and we buy hay, and we pay anywhere from $15 

 to $26 a ton, and $16 of that money is freight and goes to the railroad, 

 and $4 of it goes to the middleman who handles it, and the fellow who 

 grows the hay gets $6 a ton, and we don't care a cent who gets the 

 money, just so we get rid of it. And we grow that hay for $i . 50 a 

 ton. Now talk about us shipping hay into Alabama. Why, we have 

 to work ourselves to death to keep from growing hay. We have to 

 kill the grass to grow the cotton to buy the grass, and we haven't had 

 time to see what else we could do. And when it comes to corn, we 

 have got the world's record on corn beat 23 2 J bushels to the acre. 

 Alabama is the natural home of corn. 



NOTE. Plenty of other illustrations might be cited of the same 

 failure to produce for home consumption in other one-crop sections. 

 The wheat farmer of Minnesota or Dakota has become so much 

 engrossed in raising his single cash product that he has neglected to 

 set out fruit trees or even cultivate a garden, but has bought his food 

 in tin cans at the grocery in town. Likewise, the Northwest has sold 



1 Adapted from an address delivered at the Second Annual Convention of the 

 Farm Mortgage Bankers' Association, St. Louis, October 7 and 8, 1915. 



