COMING TO HIS OWN? n 



Since 1895 tne rapidly decreasing percentage of new 

 lands coming under cultivation, with a resulting decline 

 in ratio between farm producers and urban consumers, 

 the freer absorption of the food supply by both Ameri- 

 can and foreign markets, the gradual rise in price levels 

 have given us an era of relative rural prosperity. In- 

 deed some of the evidences of this prosperity in the 

 form of the free purchase and use of automobiles, enor- 

 mous statistical aggregates of value of animal and field 

 production, the ability of many farmers to " retire " 

 during middle life, have blinded us to sinister tendencies 

 that have been creeping into our American agriculture 

 as silently and as relentlessly as the inflowing tides of 

 the sea. Without aiming to make a complete state- 

 ment of these depressing facts, it will suffice to mention 

 those that seem to be most significant in a bearing upon 

 the question whether or not the American farmer will 

 hold his own. 



1. The great majority of American farmers are not 

 to-day securing from their labor a reward which they 

 regard as fair to themselves, nor one which students of 

 social science consider satisfactory from the stand- 

 point of minimum requirements for a decent living. 

 The best figures obtainable indicate an average labor 

 income for the American farmer of $400 per year. 

 There are some states, indeed some whole regions, 

 where farmers on the whole are very prosperous; but 

 this fact merely adds force to the discouragingly meager 

 income in those areas where the returns are at or below 

 the average. 



2. There is a widespread, almost a universal, belief 

 among farmers that, as the phrase goes, u the farmer 

 does not get his share of the consumer's dollar." 

 Doubtless some statistics on this point are misleading; 



