208 The Dawn of a New Constructive Era 



Well, what are the facts? It will not do to say, in a loose, 

 free-and-easy way, that the lands of the South are as fertile as 

 any in the world. There has been too much of that sort of talk. 

 What we want now is exactness. 



But exactness of statement of the facts is very difficult. It 

 may interest you to know that it has taken many days of hard, 

 patient digging in dry masses of census tables to gather the few 

 plain figures I am presenting to you. It has not been possible to 

 find them elsewhere. 



Note that in this comparative statement I am not dealing 

 with exceptional conditions or unusual cases. I am giving aver- 

 age figures for whole states over a ten-year period. 



For the ten years from 1900 to 1909, inclusive, the state of 

 Arkansas showed a greater average value per acre of staple farm 

 Over Lands crops than was shown by the richest states of the great corn belt. 

 Out-Produce ^^^ those ten years that average crop-value in Arkansas was 

 the Rich Corn $22.04 per acre. Mind you, this does not include cotton, rice, 

 ^^'^ sugar, fruit or truck crops, but only grain, potatoes, hay and 



forage common to the whole Mississippi Valley. 



For the same period, Illinois showed an average value per 

 acre for the same products of $17.24. In Iowa the average pro- 

 duction per acre was $14.52 ; in Indiana, $16.35 ; in Ohio, $17.62 ; 

 in Missouri, $13.54. 



This production in Illinois represented a gross return of 18.1 

 per cent on the average value of farm lands. In Iowa the re- 

 turn was 17.5 per cent ; in Arkansas it was 157.4 per cent. That 

 is to say, Arkansas land with an average valuation of only $14 an 

 acre yielded half again as much as the Iowa acre whose average 

 valuation was $83.00. 



What gave the Iowa acre this greater ^'aluation ? Not its bet- 

 ter production, as these figures show. Not its more favorable 

 location, for Des Moines and Little Rock lie at almost exactly 

 the same distance from the national center of population, which 

 is approximately the center of consumption of farm products. 

 Not better transportation facilities, for Arkansas products reach 

 the great consuming markets as directly as those of Iowa. In- 

 deed, the odds are rather in favor of Arkansas in the matter of 

 access to markets. 



There is only one true explanation of the higher level of Iowa 

 land values. The facts as to the producing power of the Iowa 



