Semi-weekly herald., 1913-09-01
PRICE OF FARMERS IN
CREASES COST OF FOOD
(By Arthur M. Evans.)
Who gets the money?

Dut now dlfHcultleS Deset the hialSH
to the land.
Not only has the cost of living gone
soaring, but everything else has shot
skyward. It's far harder to get back
to the farm than it was to get to the
city, that is, with any degree of sue
cess or profit, for within the last ten
or twenty years conditions have
changed.
The public domain is practically
exhausted of arabic lands; rich acres
are no longer to be had for the asking.
Land values have gone up, which
increases the capital necessary for
purchase. Not only does it cost more
to become a farm owner, but it costs
more to become Tenant. Advanced
land values have naturally brought
higher rentals The higher the rent
al the smaller the profit to the ten
ant.
Farm labor has gone up, cutting
down profits. Soil has been depleted
anu COSL IuoIty.
While the consumer is paying vast
ly more for what he eats and wears
than he did ten years ago, the farmer
is not getting much more recompense
for the work of production.
In other words, the number of ten
ant farmers increased twice as fast as
the number of farm operators owning
their land.
At bottom of the increase in prices
is the fact that the last decade or so
has seen an economic revolution in
America. 1t is by no means the only
cause, for a multitude of matters,
from the spots on the sun to the war
in the Balkans, have had an influence
on prices, but it is among the funda-
mental causes The march back to
the land is not so much movement
back to nature and the simple life,
charming though that sentiment is,
as it is an effort to even things up
between country and city and to re-
store the equilibrium between con-
sumption and production of farm
products.
We needn't travel back very far to
get a perspective. The settlement of
the land has not accomplished with
in recent years. It's not so long ago
that the best of soil could be obtained
L., tho hnrSnactood n
law. But it cannot be got free now,
for nearly all the good land has been
taken up and nearly three-fourths of
what remains of the public domain is
fit only for grazing purposes. It's
only few years ago that fine timber
lands could be taken up under the
homestead law. Nowadays it would
take long hunt to find patch of
timber that has not been gobbled up.
Theh free land has practically van
shed. Settlement of the land has
now become a problem not of opening
up virgin country and of moving the
frontier westward, but of cutting up
the farms into smaller holdings and Of
increasing the yield per acre.
Frontier; Its vanised. The pio-
neering epoch has ended. The limit
of cultivable area is approaching clos
er every year, while the consumption
of food and clothing is growing faster
than the production. The problem
now is to accomplish an intensive and
complex development throughout the
countryside, and that is what various
agencies are now trying to bring
about.
But it's idle to dream of an agri-
cultural renaissance so long as farm
ers find it more profitable to let their
crops rot on the ground than to take
them to market. The city is the place
in which to stimulate the back-to-the-
soil movement, this through changes
in methods of marketing and distri-
button.
Make farming profitable and agri-
culture will become more popular.
Land is increasing in value with
great lapidIty. In the ten years be-
tween 1900 ard 1910 the value of farm
property in the United States dou-
bled. 1t increased from $4,000 ,OO0,-
900 to $4,000, 1000, 900.
In ten years the average value of
farm land in the United States ad-
vanced from S15.57 per acre to $32. 40
err acre. The increase varied in dif-
ferent sections.
In the north land increased from
an average of $2i.is in 1900 to $46.26
in 1916.
In the south /, increased from $7.08
an acre to SIC ..
In the west the appreciation of val
ues was highest. Land rose from
S12.01 an acre to $30.86, an increase
of 157 per cent in ten years.
East of the Mississippi farm land on
the average increased from 1929 per
acre to $33.56. West Of the Mississip-
pi it rose from $16.67 an acre to
$31.58.
With the increase in value has come
a change in farm tenure.
The country is anproachinp n svs-