REPORT OF THE STATISTICIAN. 



509 



vidua! and far greater total value, and better returns for the farmer's 

 labor that are desired ; more home consumption, and export of the 

 crumbs that fall from the home table. 



The inevitable deduction from these facts is that American agricult- 

 ure can prosper only with an American policy, which shall produce its 

 own supplies, feed its own people, and enlarge the proportion of its 

 workers who are outside of agriculture and dependent upon it for food 

 and material Cor fabrication. It teaches that, instead of overproduction, 

 we have consumed more than has been produced in value but not in 

 quantity, excepting the lowest prices of the world for two or three pro- 

 ducts of overproduction and paying high rates for products not pro- 

 duced in sufficient quantity. The more we buy abroad the less of man- 

 ufactured products we produce at home, while farmers increase and 

 farm products cheapen from decline of home markets. It is a suicidal 

 policy to sell and export the soil in raw products of agriculture. 



SURPLUS PRODUCTS OF AGRICULTURE. 



Fifty years ago there was only a fourth of the present population. 

 The wants of the larger number are now more liberally supplied than 

 ever were the limited requirements of a more primitive mode of living. 

 The use of labor-saving machinery and appliances has enlarged and 

 cheapened production ; and the surplus, which is sent to foreign coun- 

 tries, is not only four times as much as in 1830, but is thirteen times as 

 much. The agricultural exports of 1883 were 619,209,449, and the aver- 

 age has been about that figure for five years past. 



Not only has there been a vast increase, but the history of this prog- 

 ress affords a lesson in industrial economy which farmers cannot afford 

 to overlook. It illustrates in a striking way the necessity of the great- 

 est possible diversity in rural industry. 



Fifty years ago unmanufactured cotton comprised about 60 per cent, 

 of the value of our exports, and breadstuff's and animals and their 

 products, counted together, brought only a third as much. Now, 

 while the exports of cotton in 1883 were worth nine times as much as 

 in lS25-'30, the values of animal products and breadstuff's are thirty 

 times as much as the surplus of half a century ago. The rapidity 

 of the increase has therefore been fully three times as great as in the 

 case of cotton. The early prominence of cotton in our exports was 

 phenomenal. In ten States extension of this one industry became an 

 absorbing passion, dominating agriculture, society, and politics. All 

 other agriculture was dwarfed in this section. With millions of acres 

 of wasted pasturage, almost no wool was grown or manufactured, and 

 clothing was bought on credit at enormous prices. With millions of 

 acres in forests, wash-tubs and ax-helves were brought a thousand miles; 

 a mill-log would not sell for enough to buy a hammer-handle. The cul- 

 tivator employed his horses and mules during the spring and summer 

 in killing grass, and in autumn and winter alternately in hauling out 

 cotton and bringing in hay that had floated down the great river from 

 the West. Ilogs grew wild and multiplied in the swamps, while the 

 thrifty merchant got 50 per cent, profit on Western bacon. 



It became a cherished theory in political economy that the South 

 should produce cotton, the West hogs, and the East "notions," and 

 everything else should be brought 5,000 miles — from Europe. This 

 continued until there was little produced but cotton, and much of that 

 was mortgaged a year in advance to procure the necessaries of life. 



The following table, from official records of exports, presents the prog- 



