78 
Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
results. But it must be remembered that this increase of valuation 
is partly founded on the improvement of land before unimproved. 
An emigrant, for instance, takes up a quarter section and begins 
to improve it; in ten years it will represent considerable value 
which will be added to the aggregate of valuation, but it will not 
increase the value of your farm, except that settlement, to some 
degree, enhances the value of all property in the State. 44 But farms 
did increase in value, 1 ’ you say. Certainly, but not to the extent 
generally supposed—that is. the increase was not wholly profit. 
Fences and houses and barns make property more valuable, but 
they represent value themselves, and it does not take a great many 
of them to represent a great deal of it. Railroads and school-houses 
and churches and young orchards and shade-trees and flowers, make 
the farm more valuable, but it is as if you place a dollar beside an¬ 
other dollar and say that one had doubled. Was it true that land 
which was in a high state of cultivation in 1860, was any more pro¬ 
ductive in 1870, and if not, in what did the increase of value con¬ 
sist? Was it not largely in the improvements which your loose or 
borrowed capital placed on or about your farms? Was it not large¬ 
ly in the accumulation of what may be termed luxuries—more and 
better society, more elegant home surroundings, more luxurious 
churches, things which are highly desirable, but which are wholly 
barren of pecuniary profits? Was it not true that your mortgages 
held as great a ratio to the entire value in 1870, as they did in 1860? 
And is that not true on this 9th day of September, A. D. 1875 ? 
Indeed, is it not true that there is a greater proportion of 
VALUE IN MORTGAGES 
to-day than there was in either 1860 or in 1870? This is doubt¬ 
less true, for while the mortgages have increased, the value has de¬ 
creased, especially since 1870; and this decrease and the limit of 
increase of value is a matter which those who are fond of citing 
to the growing valuation of western farms as an evidence of the 
farmers prosperity, seem to have entirely lost sight of. There is a 
virtual limit to the value of farms, When a State becomes thor¬ 
oughly populated, and the land has been brought to its limit of 
productiveness, and suitable buildings and fences and other im¬ 
provements have been erected and made, the farms have reached 
the limit of their value, and so long as the improvements are kept 
up this value will vary very little. Barring the fluctuation of our 
currency, a farm in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, or 
