730 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



supplanted the landed classes in importance. The banker million- 

 aire is greater and more powerful than the ducal landlord. Land, 

 the old source of centralized wealth, inordinate power, caste privi- 

 leges, and hereditary rights, no longer maintains its preeminent 

 importance." 



These facts, in connection with the question we are consider- 

 ing, are full of significance. Indicating an absence of adequate 

 motive for the wealthy classes to seek landed investments, they 

 show that one of the most potent influences in promoting the 

 development of landlordism is absent in the United States. 



Mr. George K. Holmes, one of the special agents in charge 

 of the volume of the Eleventh Census on real-estate mortgages, 

 in a personal letter of September 26, 1896, says : 



I have been unable to find in the observation and experience of hundreds 

 of census agents, who did work in all parts of the United States in collecting 

 statistics of mortgages, that capitalists are seeking investments in farms, ex- 

 cept in so far as they lend money to farmers on farm-mortgage securities. 

 These lenders do not want the farms. 



It is true that there is a tendency among the fashionable and 

 wealthy classes in the cities to desire land for summer residences. 

 It is unlikely, however, that this movement will ever seriously 

 encroach upon the cultivated lands of the United States. Not 

 only are large estates seldom in demand for such purposes, but, 

 in general, land occupied by the summer residences of the rich 

 is in the neighborhood of the ocean, the mountains, or the Great 

 Lakes, and is not suitable for agricultural purposes. 



V. FOUR REMEDIES FOR THE AGRICULTURAL 

 DEPRESSION CONSIDERED 



Before discussing several remedies proposed in the interest of 

 the farmer, certain unfavorable conditions, which make it impos- 

 sible to adjust supply to demand so as to render the business of 

 the farmer continuously profitable, deserve consideration. 



1 . Foremost among these conditions is the vastly increased 

 supply of farm products which, through the efficiency of modern 



