644 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



competition of the prairie farms. There is a considerable fraction of 

 farmers who are "hi a rut" and seem lacking in adaptability to new 

 conditions of competition, and more particularly to new market con- 

 ditions which have grown up around them and which are guaranteeing 

 a profit to the producers of such crops as can be supplied directly by 

 them to near-by consumers, or perhaps with small intervention by 

 middlemen. 



Another cause of decrease in farm values, but one that alternates 

 with causes of increase, is unfavorable weather too much or too little 

 rain, devastating freshets, parching droughts, excessive or deficient 

 sun heat, frosts that are too late in the spring or too early in the 

 autumn, or severe winter freezes in a latitude not accustomed to them. 

 Such unfavorable weather conditions depress the value of farm real 

 estate, even though they have continued for no longer than one year; 

 and when they have continued for two or three years the depression 

 in values is extreme. In such cases there is an eventful recovery, 

 sometimes promptly within a year and sometimes within a few 

 years. 



Some depressions in price have been hi evidence during the five 

 years under review. The tobacco crop hi some of its varieties has 

 suffered in this respect for several years and this in the face of station- 

 ary if not diminishing production. The owners of tobacco farms in 

 some counties assert that the value of their lands has decreased 

 within five years because the offers to buy tobacco have come solely 

 or mostly from one buyer, who would take the crop only at his 

 own price. 



In the case of the extraordinarily large rice crop of 1904 also there 

 was a diminished price which at once made itself felt in diminished 

 land values as compared with those of the preceding year, although 

 during the five-year period there was some increase. 



The marked drop in the price of cotton in December, 1904, from 

 which there was no full recovery until half a year after, diminished 

 the aggregate value of cotton plantations and farms by many millions 

 of dollars while the lower price continued. So it happens that farm 

 land values are as sensitive to lower and low prices of products as they 

 are to higher and high prices. 



In preceding paragraphs are given the more frequently mentioned 

 causes of depression in farm values during the last five years, but these 

 causes are not generally prevalent and are often highly localized and 

 specifically restricted. 



