Wichita eagle., 1890-03-06

quota for each unit of population being
24.3 bushels and the average price in the
| farmers home market being Al cents.
From 1887 to 1889 we added about 3,500,-
600 to the population and no less than
| 6.0O0.00O acres to the corn fields and with
yield of q bushels per acre the aggre-
gate product rose to 2. IL, ,S92, 900 bushels,
being 50 bushels per capita and the price
| IN December. in the farmers home mar
kets, fell to 2S.3 cents ard has since
fallen to about a cents. Thus we see a
| large surplus from the great crop of 1885
added to product one-half greater than
the crop of 1887, having the legitimate
and inevitable effect of cutting the price
IN two very near the middle.
With such a showing what is the
necessity of hunting for such abstract
and obscure cases as mono-metallsm, a
defflclent currency, combines, trust, a
treasury surplus, free trade, option
dealing. protective tariff, or any one of
the thousand and one causes usually
assigned for low prices, the agency OF
no one OF which in producing low prices
IS susceptible of demonstration, although
there can be no question that trusts,
combines, option dealing, mono-metal-
ism and treasury surplus and some
other things are pernicious and hurtful,
etfecting in some degree the interests of
all but very small minority of the peo-
pie and should, so far as possible, be
abolished. Yet l must repeat that at
most one and all Of the things named
are but secondary causes in producing
existing low prices for farm products.
the prime and controlling factor being
q cultivated area out of all proportion
to the existing number of consumers,
and yet with all this existing sur
plus of farm product and culti-
waited acres we are SO unrefiecting
as to clamor loudly and constantly for
the opening OF all the Indian reserva-
tiOns, that the railway companies shall
surrender unearned land grants and the
cattle syndicates shall vacate the public
domain, and now, we are even SO lost to
due regard for our own interests, as to
urge the federal government To under
take costly irrigation schemes in order
that millions of acres of the arid regions
shall compete in the markets of the
country with the farms of Kansas.
Permit me to say that these Indian
reservations. land grants, sydicate occu-
pied and arid lands are now much less
harmful than they certainly would be if
adding to surplus of products already
unmanageable and which is ever press
ing with increasing weight upon mar
kets already supplied to repletion.
Let the Indian, the railway, the
cattle syndicate and jack rabbit
possess these lands in peace until their
products are needed by tie increasing
population, which they assuredly are not
now.
Congress may not be able to relieve
the stress in agricultural circles but it
can show its good intentions by doing
all that is possible to abolish trusts,
combines, option dealing. the treasury
surplus and mono-metalism, and might
try the effect of such measure as was
recently introduced in the Canadian
parliament, wherein it is proposed to
give a bonus TO all parents having more
than gwen number of children. There
is certainly no need of congress adding
to the depression by opening new lands.
The facts are that we are long of
wheat, corn, pork, beef and other farm
products and short Of consumers solely
because the products of the nursery have
not kept pace with the increase in cult
waited lands, and this plethoric condition
of the markets would not now exist but
for the failure of the nurseries to keep
at the head of the procession, and there
is no relief in sight but such as will
come from patient waiting while popu-
lation overtakes production as it surely
will in three or four years, unless we
are blessed g with crops above the aver
age, c. WOOD DAVIS