The times., 1897-08-24
The Lesson of Wheat.

There is a point Of difference between
the capitalist press Of the country and
the people OF the same. The one would
make the people believe that, because the
crops In competing nations have failed
for season or two, they always are go
ing to fail and that the position of the
American farmer is secure under gold
contraction and the destruction OF average
prices for commodities.
The American farmer is not such an
ass as to think that the temporary boom"
in American wheat. which also involves
the tan of silver, can be perpetual. 1t Is
not our purpose to argue that point. There
is another, and it intimately is associated
with the future of American agriculture
to which we wish to call attention.
just Before the awful break in the value
OF agricultural lands In the West there
II artga gas. IL is not extremely necessary
at this time TO discuss at large the con
ditiors under which this farm mortga ge
movement came tn pass. For present pur-
poses it only is worth while to remark
that these farm mortga ges over the length
and breadth Of the Western agricultural
region resulted from the provision of the
great capitalists of the world, who were
anxious that the lesser capitalists should
holster falling Western farm investments,
and thus enahle the former to unload rail-!
way and such like investTne nts.
The scheme worked beautifully. The
savings CT eIergymen, clerks and school
teachers, throughout the New England
and Middle States, We're consolidated and
destroyed on farms in the West, which
never, or seldom, had ever been able to
earn the interest on the debt. This is by
way OF history and only Introductory To
the argument.
While this Western farm mortgage busi-
ness was going on, there were, here and
there, sh7ewd farmers, in Kansas, Ne
brssks, Minnesota and other places, who
saw the storm coming. They took the
money of the Eastern mortgage COM
panes. abandoned their farms and went
South. The current and Immediately pros
pective situation VIII superinduce much
larger movement iii the same direction.
Why3
Because it is quite apparent that the
present condition OF the breadstuffs
market cannot last Sensible wheat grow
ers will not be deIuded by the idea that
the conditions Of 1897 are probably. or
even possibly, permanent; but they are
liable TO make farm property saleabIe.
Nothing better could happen to the sturdy
American man who owns a Western farm
and wants TO get rid of it for the purpose
of reinvestmeHt in land of less hopeless
competition and restriction.
Measured by the conditions of contrac-
tion and trust monopoly, which are certain
to curse this country for the next three
years, the only hope for the agricultural
interest is to restrict production. under
long haul conditions, in the West, and to
join in the Southern evolution, in connec-
ton with which it is possible to build up
farming Interest by the side of great
industrial Developments, the one being COM
Elementary to the other, with ordinary ex-
| changes on the ground, an with only the
| surplus products of the community to
bother the people about outside markets.
We have had a hard lesson of Long
haui'' civilization. With the principal
| agricultural producers in the West, and the
chief manufacturing Industries fifteen hun
| dred or two thousand miles away from
| them, the profits OF both, largely, have
| been eaten up In transportation. We must
reach a letter basis of n national economy.
| Under existing circums tances it is idiocy
TO think that per capita volume of
currency, smaller than pretended to do the
business of the people before the civil war,
can approximate the needs of internal ex-
| change at this day. We are confronted
with the necessity for Encouragement OF
population. People must be assembled
for agricultural activities, not Thousand
or two thousand miles from the native CON
sumine market, but within sight OF it.
The evolution of the South, with its
dTful concentration of agricultur al
mining and other resources and ad-
rantages within limited areas, offers the