Shepherdstown register. [volume] (Shepherdstown, Va. [W. Va.]) 1849-1955, 1895-08-29
Harvest and Harvest.

| indeed, it may larry be aihrmed thaI
there were only two causes of what we
nowadays call "hard times '-destruc-
tive war and deficient harvests. And
since even the medieval states adapted
themselves to chronic warfare as the
natural order of existence, the relative
increase or decrease in a community
prosperity was chiefly governed by the
harvest.
1t is true that since the rise of the
modern credit system other factors to
cause or remove "hard times have
been introduced. Whether in the
shape of deprecated currency-as in
John Laws experiment in France of
172O-or in the shape of expanded
speculation Oh borrowed money, the
upward and downward swing Of pros
perity has become vastly wider, and
in particular the panic is a creation
chiefly Of modern times. Neverthe-
less, the harvest yield has remained a
fundamental factor, and tits certain so
to remain to the end of time Its ag-
gregate supply, and as we saw in wheat
last year, such phenomenon as over
production, with consequent unproft-
able prices, is not impossible But it
needs no argument to show which COM
munitv has the worst Of 1.-THE COM
mumity which has produced 50 much
grain that its selling price is nominal,
or the community whose crop has been
so blighted that it has produced no
grain at all.
While the absolute and relative vol
ume Of harvest always exerts pro-
found influence upon Il community's
prosperity, there are times when crop
results become a peculiarly critical
factor in the situation That this
year S anticipated harvest int the United
States is Of such a character, no one
can doubt. 1t can never be affirmed
with certainty how far the outcome Of
last years corn harvest created or en-
phasized the trade depression. In the
entire United States the seasons corn
yield footed up but 60 per cent Of the
crop of 1891. In some states the re-
suit meant ruin. Iowa produced less
than one-third It's corn yield of 1898
Kansas had still less to show; Nebras-
ka's farmers gathered hardly one
twelfth ofther ordinary harvest. Since
discomfort is the child of penury, and
since financial heresy IS the certain po-
litical result Of discomfort, it is not
strange that free silver coinage should
have seemed, six months ago, to have
absolutely captured Kansas and Ne
braska. If this season had witnessed
another deficient crop of l 200, 900, 900
bushels or less, it might reasonably be
doubted whether the Iowa conventions
would have taken the stand they have
for a sound currency. The harvest
was an unusually critical factor in the
situation, and the results now well
assured are little short of providen-
tial
Harvest results have many times in
history served to turn the scale in I'M
portant national events. Prof. Thorold
Rogers has pointed out the curious
| fact of England five successive famine
years of 1916 to 1650-a period Of
distressingly hard times. These were
the very years when the Puritan reyo-
luton gained the country, and the
fortunes of Charles l. and his landed
aristocracy were finally ruined. The
resources of France at the close Of the
seventeenth century, impaired already
by Louis NIV.'s extensive wars, were
utterly shattered by the protracted
dearth of 1862 to 1893, and the nation
which confronted Marlborough in the
Spanish Succession Wars was a COM
mercial wreck. The very mercantile
navy built up by Colbert was rotting
at its docks. Under quite different
circumstances-foI hard times are not
always an unmixed evil-accepted
history itself attests the enormous in
Auence of the English and Irish har-
vest failure of 1915 in forcing Great
Bntain's adoption of free trade. His
tory has been slow to attribute to the
great American wheat crop of 1879
its true share in the successful resump-
ton Of specie payments and the con-
sequent disappearance of hard times.
But nobody knew better than Secreta-
ny Sherman, as his official correspond
ence emphatically proves, how vital
this factor was. Since then The So
called European famine" of 1891 has
served undoubtedly as potent cause
in checking Europe's recovery from
the panic of 1890, and consequently