\ SOME ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF FARM OWNERSHIP 11 
AMouNTS Per CommMopity UNItT 
Price of all commodities entering index list. 
Price of wheat. 
Spread in price of wheat between Amenia and Minneapolis. 
In the case of net increments per acre and of spread per bushel 
in the price of wheat between Amenia and Minneapolis, the best 
fitting trends were arithmetic; but in the case of the other factors 
having upward trends compound-interest curves were best. ° 
The slope of the trend was steepest in the case of unconverted net 
increments; that is, net increments expressed in terms of money of 
the respective years, the ordinate® of the net increments for 1920 
being thirty-nine times that of 1896. This stands in marked con- 
trast with the trend of the spread in wheat price between Amenia 
and Minneapolis in which the 1920 ordinate was but one and two- 
tenths times that of 1896. The relative amounts of increase in the 
case of the other factors *° were such as to put them in the following 
order, factors with steepest trends preceding: Real-estate valuation 
per acre; prices of all commodities; real-estate taxes per acre; wheat 
prices; primary net rents (unconverted) ; costs per acre (five items) ; 
value of wheat yield; and primary net rents (converted). 
The order of the factors is somewhat different here from that in 
which they stand when only so much of the quarter century is in- 
cluded as preceded the World War. The order of the first six of 
the factors for the pre-war period was: Primary net rents (uncon- 
verted ) ; real-estate valuations; real-estate taxes; wheat prices; prices 
of all commodities; and cost per acre (five items). Kvidently the 
figures of the years following 1914 were of such magnitudes as to 
put the slope of the trends of real-estate valuations, prices of all 
commodities, taxes, and wheat prices above that of primary net 
rent, and to put the prices of all commodities above real-estate taxes 
and wheat prices. The group of trends for the 19-year period 
showed a strengthening of the owner’s position in terms of current 
income and purchasing power more than is shown by the group of 
trends for the entire quarter century, and his position was corre- 
spondingly weakened in the period following 1914. 
Over the entire 25-year period farm real-estate valuations per 
acre showed an upward movement at the rate of 8.4 per cent yearly. 
The corresponding rate for the prices of all commodities was 6.2 per 
cent; for unconverted primary net rents, 6.7 per cent; for real-estate 
‘taxes, 5.6 per cent; and for five cost items, 2.8 per cent. The low 
average rate of advance in the five cost items was due to the fact 
that two of the five cost items had downward trends and only one of 
the other two had more than doubled. Real-estate taxes, although 
not costs in the same sense as the five selected items of expense, were 
outlays which advanced more rapidly than the five selected costs 
but less rapidly than primary net rents. 
®An ordinate is a vertical line erected upon the base line at_a point representing 
any year in the quarter century to which the line of trend applies. It is terminated 
by the base line on the one hand and the trend line on the other. A distinction should 
be made between the actual data of an ownership factor for any year and the ordinate 
of trend for that year. Although the ordinates of trend are greater than the actual 
data by certain amounts in some years and less in others, the trend is so computed 
that the sum of the squares of these differences is as small as possible. The slope of 
the trend is merely the ratio of the ordinate of the final year to that of the initial year. 
10The slope of trends represented by compound-interest curves, as these are, is less 
suitably shown as a ratio of the ordinates of the beginning and final years. 
