IV. CONCLUSION. 



It remains now to summarize briefly the facts shown 

 respecting the condition of the farmers in Harrison township 

 since its settlement, with a view to learning something of the 

 various economic influences that during that time have been 

 operative upon western agriculture, as far as they may be 

 exemplified in this township. As will be seen, our data permit 

 us to examine only such influences as can be seen plainly at 

 work in individual cases. Matters like the burden of indirect 

 taxes, or the effect of changes in the value of the circulating 

 medium, which can be observed only on the wide scale, are 

 here excluded. 



We have had before HS a class of farmers owning lands of 

 steadily increasing value. Of those who are still residents, 

 about half got their lands either as gifts from the govern- 

 ment, or on very easy terms from the Union Pacific Railway 

 Company; the remainder purchased their farms from other 

 owners than the railway company, at prices ranging from 

 seven or eight dollars an acre in earlier times to twenty-five 

 or thirty dollars in late years; in most cases these paid a good 

 part of the purchase money in cash. The farmers of this 

 township have on the average a little over a quarter section 

 of land each, and usually from 125 to 135 acres in a quarter 

 section is plow-land. A large proportion of the farms are 

 mortgaged, and the debt on such as are mortgaged is on the 

 average something over one-third the actual value of the 

 farms. When a tract of land is once encumbered, the ten- 

 dency is often for the mortgage on it to increase in size as 

 the rise in the value of the security makes a larger loan possi- 

 ble. The mortgages on lands obtained from the govern- 

 ment or the railway company are in general lighter than those 

 on lands purchased from individual owners, and the condi- 

 tion of the farmers owning such lands is correspondingly 



