48 AMERICAN FARMS. 



these reports shows that, of the 215 farms, 113 are 

 mortgaged. 



Seventy-five per cent, of farms of Dakota are mort- 

 gaged for an aggregate amount of ^50,000,000.' 



The New York Times of December 27, 1886, con- 

 tained a long article from Mr. Frank Wilkeson on the 

 condition of the farmers of Kansas. He said : " It is a 

 financial impossibility in this era of agricultural com- 

 petitive warfare for a farmer of average intelligence and 

 skill who tills a farm of 100 acres of land, except corn 

 land, to lift a mortgage of say $1,000, with money earned 

 by growing staple crops. ... I can safely say that 

 nine tenths of all the uplands lying west of the ninety- 

 seventh meridian are really small grain lands, which are 



' According to the report of the Commissioner of Labor Statistics 

 for Illinois, "the mortgage indebtedness of farmers for borrowed 

 money has increased twenty-three per cent, since 1880 in this State, 

 twice the increase in the value of farm lands." Twenty-five counties 

 are reported to have increased their value of farm lands, twenty-three 

 have decreased, and in sixteen the values have remained the same. 



" It is now twenty years at least that farming has been going rapidly 

 downward. Farms bought in the war era have been selling almost 

 everywhere in the East for 07ie half to one third of their cost. Farms 

 in New England, and some in the Middle States, are frequently sold 

 for less than the buildings cost which are upon them. This is really 

 no exaggeration. Sales of this sort, and where the depreciation in 

 value has wiped out the owner's equity in them, have been for years a 

 matter of notorious knowledge in almost every Eastern community. 

 Within a year, in a healthy and fertile county not sixty miles from 

 New York, a farm having on it two mortgages — a first mortgage of 

 $3,000 and a second mortgage of $2,000 — was sold under foreclosure 

 for the sum represented by the first mortgage only. The holder of 

 the second one did not think it worth while to be present, or to have 

 a representative present at the sale, to bid the single dollar which 

 would have saved, or made a show of saving, his investment." 



JoET Benton, in Popular Science Monthly, Nov., 1889. 



