The Bemidji daily pioneer., 1909-09-16

Declares the Idea That We Feed the
World Is Being Corrected and the
Question Of Market for Our Prod
ucts Abroad Will Soon Give Way to
the Question of a Food Supply at
Home.
Chicago, Sept. 1I-tThe idea that
we feed the world is being corrected
ana unless we can increase the agri-
cultural population and their product
the question of a source of food sup
ply at home will soon supersede the
question of a market for our own
products abroad"
This was the warning given by
James j. Hill at the convention of the
American Bankers association during
discussion of the decline of agricul-
ture and its consequences. Mr.. Hills
subject was National Wealth and the
Farm"
I'VE have" said the speaker, "al-
most reached a point where, owing to
increased population without in
creased production per acre, our home
food supply will be INSULT cient for
our own needs; within ten years, pos
s1bly less, we are likely to become a
wheat importing nation; the per-
centage of the population engaged in
agriculture and the wheat product per
acre are both falling; at the same
time the cost of living is raised every
where by this relative scarcity of
bread, by artificial increase in the
price of all manufactured articles and
by habit of extravaganza which has
enlarged the view Of both rich and
poor of what are to be considered the
necessaries of life These plain facts
should disturb and arouse not only the
economic student but the men who
are most intimately related to the
wealth of the nation and most con-
cerned that it shall not suffer loss or
decreases"
Sign of National Disaster.
Mr.. Hill declared that never yet
has enhanced cost of living, when due
to agricultural decline and inability
to supply national needs, failed to
end in national disaster. Mr. Hill said
the farm is our main reliance and that
every other activity depends on that.
He asserted, however, that the major
ity of people fail to realize practically
the declining status Of agriculture in
the country.
''They are nlisled by the statistics
Of farm values and products, mount
ing annually by great leaps, into think
ing that this absolute increase implies
relative advance Of this industry as
compared with Others" said he. elk
actly the opposite is the case. refer
not merely to the quality and results
Of our tillage, but to the setting of
the human tide away from the culti-
waited field and toward the factory
gate or the city slum. This is some
thing whose consequences for evil are
as certain as If the aggregate depos-
it's in all the banks of this country
were decreasing by fixed percentage
every ten years, while their loans
were increasing by another percentage
just as stable. You would know what
catastrophe that assured by and by.
ut means the same thing, in kind
and consequences, when the agricu1-
tural population, the producers and
depositors in the great national treas
ury of wealth, is declining year by
year, while the city population, which
thrives only by drawing drafts upon
the land and cannot live year after
these cease to be honored, rises at it's
expense. Yet not only is such crisis
approaching, but it is being hastened
by legislative stimulation in favor of
other Industries while overlooking
;,s