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DRY-FARMING CONGRESS, WICHITA, 1914 



long without disaster. The more detailed statistics were equally dis- 

 couraging. The production of the cereals, taken together, increased only 

 2 percent. The figures as to the number of livestock for the two censuses 

 are not precisely comparable, but they make it substantially certain that 

 during the decade there was a decrease of several percent in the number 

 of cattle and sheep and probably also a decrease in the number of hogs. 

 Even the dairy industry and the poultry industry, for all the attention 

 given to them in recent years, failed to keep pace with the population. 



More rosy views of the progress of agriculture are sometimes drawn 

 from the crop estimates of the United States Department of Agriculture. 

 It should not be forgotten, however, that these do not pretend to be any- 

 thing but guesses. The department admits without hesitation that the 

 census figures are the more reliable, and uses them as a basis for revising 

 its estimates from time to time. At least until recently the estimates of 

 the department were, unfortunately, far from accurate, and lent them- 

 selves to very misleading conclusions as to the increase of crop acreage. 



Of course the census statistics are now five years old. Conditions 

 may have improved somewhat in that time. There can be no doubt that 

 the acreage of wheat increased rapidly in 1913 and 1914 and exceptionally 

 favorable weather conditions made the crop of 1914 far larger than any 

 previously harvested. - As to the more permanent tendencies of yields per 

 acre one can scarcely draw safe conclusions from the figures of a few 

 years. 



There are plenty of other evidences, aside from statistics of crops 

 and domestic animals, that agricultural production in this country has been 

 in general falling behind in the race with population. Two familiar re- 

 sults prove it — the great advance in the prices of farm products and the 

 decline in food exports. 



In the last two or three years more abundant yields have resulted in 

 some decline of prices, but the general level is far higher than it was 

 fifteen or twenty years ago. Between 1899 and 1909, according to the 

 returns of the farmers themselves to the Bureau of the Census the average 

 farm value of crops per unit increased by two-thirds, 66 percent. Accord- 

 ing to calculations of the Department of Agriculture the average prices 

 received by farmers for their products went up six times as fast during 

 that same decade as the average prices of the leading products bought by 

 farmers. Of course the prices of commodities in general have gone up 

 during the last twenty years, largely because of the increased production 

 of gold. But the farm products have outstripped other products mater- 

 ially, a fact which can be attributed only to a relative shortage of output 

 from the farms. It was largely because of the tremendous advance in 

 the prices of farm products that the average value of farm land per acre 

 in the United States more than doubled during the first decade of this 

 century. The farm-owner in general has prospered; failure of agricul- 

 tural production to keep pace with population has no terrors for him. But 



