Norwich bulletin., 1911-02-11
PRICES DoUBLE-PINCH THE FARMER.

(written Specially for The Bulletin )
 Quito a while ago l remember talk lag about what Dean Roberts of the clarsd to bs the trouble with country life While various commissions were preaching that tho farmers never needed better schools and cheaper transportation and more sewing so- otsties. etc, Dean Roberts hit the nail squaxsly on the head by saying that all these were mere Incidents: that the trouble with farming was lack of pro0ts. This. too, came right at the omo when consumers were sorest over shs high prices of all necessities, and when too many of them were "cuss- tag" ths farmer for his greed in asking = much for his produce.
 Ysu aiI knew perfectly we'll that nev- or had any forgiveness for those mis- un-hformed critics who have tried to had on the overburdened farmers shoulders any considerable measure of responsibility for the high prices which consumers have had to pay and are stiA paying. As a straight matter of fact there isn't a single cue Of the btg staple crops of the country which has, within my memory, sold, on the average through the country at large, fer an average price sufficient to pay Q0GSns W6kGS ana IAlf DIOIlI 10 I16 farDmers who raised 1t. Dean Roberts bas shown that for twenty years the Average price at which the average farmer was compelled to sell his wheat was net enough to pay wages alone. to say nothing of profit. A few farmers, with extra good crops and unusually convenient markets, made uaonsy: the rest lost money or at least worked for nothing and bearded themselves. And yet the av- er1g0 consumer was constantly on the dhigh prbce' of flour!
 What was true of wheat was also true of eerr and oats and potatoes. Here and there farmers raising these various products got prices for them -sumc1enk to pay them a dollar a day and psrhAps ten or twenty per cent. profit. But it always has been and is now . simple matter for anybody to take the annual figures collected and published by the department of agri- culture, compute the average acre. yield and Che avsrage acre-income to the farmer. and set it over against what can easily be figured to be the nAnisnifm cost of seed and fertilizer cd iabor for the average acre. There tsuft single one of these crops which AAs regularly nor even often returned te tfss fArmess of the, United States aM ehsy spent in raising it.-plus fair wagss and a business profit.
 e ssSrss, thsr: are farmers here an1 thsre who have made money raising wheat, and raising corn, and raising potatoes. Of them we read in tho agricultural papers. There are more who have made no money at any sf tasss crops Of them we hear neell1ng.-except in the growing sym pssiums in the back-rooms of coun- tTy stors& I'm talking of the average, of the whole lot of us farmers, as a bunch. Az a whole, taking our seven or eight millions as one Big Hayseed, he has not made money nor even the staple crops on which the country lives This is the fact,-the one outrageous and intolerable fact which any competent student of sta tistics might have learned for himself anytime the last twenty years. How much farther back than that I cannot personally avouch
 But we've heard very little about it from the theoretical economists and delieatefy maincnred statisticians who pretend to do our thinking for us. We've seen very few suggestions of this iamentable condition of affairs In the papers, either the professedly ag- ricultural papers of those of so-called metropolitan" character. We're hear fhG nOtnlnB aDouL IL, even now i've been waiting over a month to see how much publicity would be given to the latest statistics from the department of agriculture a. to yields and prices for 1910. Thus far, the amount of noise which has been made about these latest figures has been neither dsafsning or annoying. In truth, very much doubt if ten who may read this VIII svor have seen the figures bsfore.-or any reference to them.
 Vet the facts given by the depart mont in its final report on the princi- pal crops of 1910 and their farm prices constitute the most vital inn portant contribution to the domestic news of the country which has been made for tho twelve-month. They dis close . condition of affairs which ought to be regarded as intolera1ble by producer and consumer alike, and which-if the farmers of the land had a single real representative in con- gress, should have already set him vigorously at work in the cause of his constituents. For these figures show that while 1910 marked the culmina- ton of the high prices to consumers, tAe farmers not only got no benefit actmal and immense loss
 e 4ke three printed esrsal crops, wheat, corn and oats. we farmers pro- ducsd ip 1910 -Four hundred and forty million bushels more than we did in 19oV. Yet the farm value of this whop- Ding bumper crop based on prices pre- oeo, 600 less chan the farm value of the smaller crop of 1909! Four hundred