To me it seems that this over-production is relative rather than 

 actual, that it is determined rather by the ability to purchase than 

 by the actual needs of the consumer. To take for illustration our 

 manufactures, certainly there is of these products of labor an enor- 

 mous supply, but does this in fact surpass or as yet even equal the 

 reasonable desires or legitimate needs of our people ? What woman 

 would not be pleased to-day to add a new gown to her wardrobe or 

 a new bonnet. What man of us who would not find a new suit of 

 clothes, if not an actual necessity, at least convenient ; of all 

 these implements here on exhibition, how few would remain unsold 

 if what appwr more urgent demands for absolute necessities did 

 not compel tne farmer to careful deliberation over his expenditures. 



But to return to agricultural products, let me give an illustra- 

 tion, and I purposely select a product partly the result of agricul- 

 tural and partly of the manufacturing industry, also a product 

 almost wholly imported and from countries with which we have 

 but very little reciprocal commerce, so that it would naturally hap- 

 pen that such a product would perhaps best illustrate the increase 

 of the country not only in total but per capita consumption, and 

 best illustrate the fact that perhaps no people on the earth are to-day 

 so well provided with the necessities or even luxuries of living as 

 are we. 



Now, during the decade before the present century, viz. : from 

 1790 to 1890 the annual per capita consumption of sugar in the Uni- 

 ted States was less than ten pounds (9.65). In 1840 it had increased 

 to only fifteen pounds. It doubled during the next twenty years, 

 being thirty-one in 1850, and during the past thirty years it has 

 again nearly doubled, since the present annual per capita con- 

 sumption of sugar in this country is nearly or quite sixty pounds. 

 Can any one believe that with such a record there is reason to 

 question the general prosperity of the country ? 



As with sugar, so is it with many another article of consumption 

 by our people. It is estimated that the per capita consumption of 

 breadstuff s amounts annually to an equivalent of fully eight 

 bushels of grain, mainly wheat and corn, " making the fullest 

 bread ration of any nation in the world," as the statistician of the 

 Department of Agriculture declares. Indeed it is proverbial that 

 as a people we are almost prodigal in our expenditures for food 

 supplies. But 1 wish to call attention to the several points which 



