836 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



composed of as widely divergent elements as would be a similar 

 average for an industrial group. 



It might be said that the earnings of farm families as here given 

 do not materially exceed the earnings of one adult farm laborer at 

 the rate of $30 a month and board. The figures do not, indeed, 

 speak of large wealth and do not seem to offer brilliant opportunities 

 for young men seeking a short road to affluence; nevertheless, it is 

 probably true that the farming population of the United States, 

 consisting as it does of more than 30 million people, has a larger 

 average income per family than any other equally homogeneous 

 group of individuals of anything like the same size anywhere in the 

 world. 



NOTE. The same writer has carried this study somewhat farther 

 in Farmers 1 Bulletin 746, in which he makes comparisons between 

 the incomes of farmers and other classes of workers. After deriving 

 the figure $402 as above, he points out that this average 



is affected by the financial losses sustained by the estates of wealthy persons who 

 farm for amusement, by the small farm incomes from suburban farms whose 

 owners earn their living by occupations other than fanning, and by the low wages 

 of small tenant fanners in the South, where tenantry in many cases is simply a 

 method of hiring labor. Furthermore, the $402 include no earnings derived from 

 pursuits other than farming, an item that is important in certain regions in which 

 even genuine farmers often engage in lumbering or other outside work in addition 

 to their work on the farms. There is no doubt, therefore, but that this figure is 

 lower than the true average income of typical farmers throughout the country. 



The office of Farm Management has made intensive studies of 4,018 farms in 

 widely scattered sections of the United States. In each region selected all the farms 

 were investigated, but the regions themselves generally represent better than 

 average conditions. The average earnings of these farms were $952, of which 

 about $400 represented the value of the house rent and of food and fuel supplied 

 by the farm, and about $550 the cash income of the farm family. The two figures 

 may be considered as the extremes between which the true average lies. It is 

 significant that the averages obtained by actual investigations of 25,000 families of 

 wage earners made by the Bureau of Labor in 1902 shows an average income of 

 $750 per family, and a study of 16,000 industrial families made by the Immigration 

 Commission in 1909 shows an average of $721 per family. While the farm families 

 of the United States thus seem to be making about the same amount as the 

 industrial families, 



their financial position is rendered more advantageous by reason 

 (i) of the lower cost of living in the country, (2) the interest yielded 

 by the farm investment, and (3) possible gains from the increase in 

 value of farm property. 



