CROP YIELDS AND PRICES 115 



are on a "hill" of high prices or whether. we have just passed 

 through a "valley" of low prices? 



The average farm price of corn in the United States for the 

 ten years 1891 to 1900 was 33 cents a bushel. The average value 

 of the crop per acre was $7.99. For the same ten years, the 

 average farm price of wheat was 63 cents and the average value 

 of the crop per acre was $8.44. 



As a matter of fact, the last twenty years of the last century 

 were a period the like of which we never had before and can 

 never see again. The great open prairies were then skimmed. 

 Following the Civil War, a large number of persons went into 

 farming probably too many for the old conditions, vastly too 

 many for the new. New kinds of farm machinery came into gen- 

 eral use in the eighties that doubled the farmer's efficiency. For 

 ages, nature had been enriching the lands of the great Central 

 Grass Belt. These lands had little value, so that land rent was 

 almost nothing. They were exceedingly fertile, so that plant-food 

 was free. Free land, free plant-food, too many farmers, new ma- 

 chinery a combination of conditions that never before existed 

 and can never come again ! Those were the days when the 

 Nebraska farmer burned corn because it was cheaper than coal. 

 It is no wonder that our agricultural exports were large. Nor is 

 it any wonder that young men went to cities by the thousands, 

 because farming did not pay. 



Present farm prices not high for farm conditions. The city 

 dweller who compares prices with 1896, and perhaps remembers 

 his boyhood days on the farm, thinks that the farmers of to-day 

 must be getting rich. He supposes that every farmer rides in an 

 automobile. Some persons go so far as to blame the farmer's 

 automobile for the high cost of living. As a matter of fact, the 

 percentage of farmers who own automobiles is very small. There 

 are only a few sections where such ownership is common, and even 

 in those sections the landlords are often the ones with the auto- 

 mobiles. Taking the United States as a whole, for every farmer 

 who owns an automobile there are many whose only vehicle of 

 luxury is a spring seat on a lumber wagon. 



The census report gives some indication of the wealth of 



