6 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



meteorologic conditions, over which man obviously has neither 

 control nor prophetic vision, but also from the fact that the agri- 

 cultural output is in most cases produced by a far greater number 

 of disconnected individuals. The several crops are grown upon 

 a countless number of widely scattered farms, the owners of which 

 in each case are of necessity ignorant for the most part of the 

 intentions and operations of other producers. Even were there 

 no uncertainties of weather to contend against, there would still 

 be serious and unforeseeable maladjustments of supply because 

 of the inability of individual producers to gauge the total output, 

 an inability which is obviously more marked in the case of 

 agriculture than in either mining or manufacture. 



In the following paper we shall study the influence of this 

 peculiarly fortuitous factor upon general business, and attempt 

 to measure the extent of its responsibility for the advances and 

 reverses of trade in America during the past thirty or forty years. 



One can easily discern four or five important ways in which 

 general business conditions are likely to be affected by the success 

 or failure of the crops. 



i . In the first place the size of the crops exerts a considerable 

 influence over the community's power to purchase other goods. 

 If the season has been successful, the farmer is almost sure to 

 increase his expenditures, and use at least a part of his new earn- 

 ings. He may build an addition to his house or erect a new 

 barn, or he may purchase a piano or a new buggy or new house 

 furnishings or new clothes for himself and his family. Even if 

 he does not use all of the additions to his income himself, but 

 deposits some of them in the banks, they will none the less 

 help to swell the market for other goods in the hands of other 

 customers of the bank. If, further, on account of a plentiful har- 

 vest, the prices of food and of certain sorts of clothing are reduced, 

 another result to be expected is that people in general outside of 

 agricultural pursuits will have more to spend upon other things. 

 A bountiful harvest is thus significant for almost all of the occu- 

 pations in a community. It involves an immediate expansion of 



