Bridgeton pioneer., 1885-12-10
AN OPTIMISTIC VIEW OF LOW
PRICES FOR CROPS.


the world, for 1884, average high.
There is a great abundance of bread
stuffs and of those coarser grains used
in manufacturing milk, butter cheese,
beef, mutton, pork, &c. As natural
consequence, grains are low, and many
farmers think there is no margin be
tween cost and receipts, especially in
wheat. This condition of things has
the effect to make many farmers a little
respondent, fearing small receipts this
year is but a prophecy of what may
be expected in the future MANY
farmers, oppressed by such fears, begin
to think there will be no money in
farming in the future; that their occu-
patton is gone.
Now, there is more cheerful view
of the situation that it may be we'll to
indulge in. The natural laws of pro
duction and consumption have ten
dency to regulate them and adapt them
to each other. When products of any
kind become SO abundant as to sell at
production. Such has already been
the effect of the present low rates of
wheat. We learn that in the Winter
wheat growing States the breadth
sown to that cereal has been very much
reduced. This will probably make
next years crop less than this years.
But there is another much more en-
couraging effect of low prices mani
tested; low prices stimulate consump-
ton. A large proportion of the people
of even the more enlightened nations
of the globe depend for bread on the
cheaper and coarser grains, such as
rye, corn, barley, oats and buckwheat.
White wheat bread is a luxury rarely
INDUCED in by the poorer people in the
nations of Europe, and even those who
have immigrated to this country and
are in condition to afford better bread,
are so under the influence of habit that
they are slow to change. especially
when that change will add little to
the cost of living. Abundance of cheap
wheat will gradually bring about
change in the diet of such, and when
they have come to realize the supe-
riority of wheat bread, they are not
going to give it up in future years be-
cause of a slight advance in price. 1t
is reported that many of the peasants
of Germany who had never before
70 of xt,hn
within the last four or five years, owing
to the low prices of wheat, to indulge
in wheat bread; and when the habit
becomes fixed, they are not going to
abandon it, even though prices should
advance ten or twenty per cent.
Another good effect of low prices of
wheat is, to stimulate farmers to more
thorough culture of the crop. With
yield of twenty bushels of wheat per
acre farmers know that they cannot
afford to grow it at eighty cents or
S1.00 bushel; but it, at an additional
cost OF from $500 to $1,000 an acre for
fertilizers and culture, they can crowd
the yield up to forty bushels per acre,
there might be margin of profit even
at low prices.
There is another fact in connection
with this matter of over-production
that it may be we'll not to lose sight of:
During the last four to six years there
has been an unusual, we may say an
abnormal extension of railways into
unsettled portions of the Northwest,
opening up vast area of the best
wheat producing land in the world.
This, with the strong inducements Of
fered to settlers, has stimulated immi-
grafton both from foreign countries and
from States further East The facility
with which wheat could be grown on
the freshly broken praries has led to
the sowing of an inordinate proportion
OF that cereal; even those engaged in
other pursuits have taken up large
tracts of prairie, hiring it broken, pre-
pared and drilled by contract and
reaped and threshed in the same way,
thus disproportionately increasing the
production of wheat This is not legit-
innate farming, but a kind of specula-
tive farming INDUCED in, temporarily,
by outsiders. 1t is not probable that
this practice will be perpetuated Low
prices will terminate it and these gam
bling spectators will turn their atten-
ton in some other direction. 1t is
always advisable to look upon the
bright side of every question, if it has
a bright side, and it does not require
large optimistic spirit to see a silver
lining to the somewhat sombre clouds
that now hang over the farmers hori-
zon.-RNral Home.
Charles H. Barker, resident of