Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1893-03-08
FARMERS SELLING OUT.
SOME NEW REASONS WHY IT NO LONGER
PAYS.
Between Thirty and Forty Sales Now Billed to
Come Off in Ohio County - The Causes
Assigned for Such a State Of Affairs.

It Is not q new thing to say that farm
ing is not as renumerative as 1t ought
to be; it has even been said that the in
ducements at present are not what they
used to be, and that each year brought
to close sees the average agricultural
list worse off than before.
Many causes, all participating in
greater or less degree to bring abouG
this deplorabe result, have been cata-
logued, and potent and prominent
among them has been the low prices at
which a farmer Is compelled to part
with his products, and the high price
he is forced to pay for all he has to buy.
Various other causes, such as the COM
petition of the great West, the injustice
and unfairness of railroad rates, the ex-
haustion of the soil, ETC., have been
pointed out, and all these no doubt have
their bearing upon the case. But let
the causes be what they may, 1t is
certain that in the face of growth
in the total population, and conse-
ouently enhanced demand for all the
products of the soil, the values OF farm
ing lands have steadily deprecated over
a long series Of years, and there seems,
at least in that portion OF the country
adjacent to this city, tendency to
abandon farming in the broad and full
meaning of the term.
An Ohio county farmer referred to
this matter yesterday, and said:
81 am pretty familiar with all the
causes assigned for the decay OF the
agricultural interests in this vicinity,
and while there is much truth in the
usual list Of reasons given, l think a
main cause has been very largely over
looked. 1t bears particularly upon the
cry that farming no longer pays.
That element Is in the farm labor OF
the present day. When was o young
man there was no complaint. We worked
our farm and made it pay; that Is, we
made living and something more. In
those days days work for farm hand
was about twice what it is now. We
started in at daylight and we stopped
at dark, or after, and two men
would cradle and bind q
hundred dozen OF wheat or
oats, and one man would reap and bind
forty dozen in day. 1 think two men
In those days were about equal to five
now, in the amount of work performed.
By insensible degrees the city idea OF
eight and nine hours for days work
has found Judgement on the farm,
and with this and the drift OF farmers
boys to the cities and to the west,
it has come to pass that
labor has to be hired in four cases now
where it was done once thirty years ago.
Short hours and hired labor, with
minimum of work to the day, runs up
the cost of production to the farmer,
and as result he finds that 1t doesn't
pay to run farm, and sells out. III
venture the statement that thir:y-five
sales will take place In this county In
the next thirty days. The reason is,
| very largely, that the farmers are try
| ing to rup the old farm on a new city
system and it don't work"
A city real estate man was asked
about the statement that many sales
were expected TO occur, and he SAID:
at is a fact. Personally / have thirty
one sales in my hands at this time, hav-
ing received orders for four new ones to-
day. There are others which / know OF.
There are sales Of cattle, cows, horses,
farming implements, etc., and they are
scattered all over the county. l never
knew such run on farm sales before,
and there must be some very especial
reasons for it,"