The Mena weekly star., 1921-12-22
nu II q TAYLOR.

XIX Als Ns AAA n Chief of the Bureau of Markets, o' D.
 Department of Agriculture.
 Editors Note-H. c. Taylor, chief of the Bureau of Markets for the United States Department of Agricul- ture. is both a scientific and old 8as),ioneds farmer. While his years If speculation and intensive study haye eiy4n him a wide background on which to base theory and practice, he har lao undertaken the task of under siax.dir,o fhe actual conditions which confront the American farmer. He IS reropnized as one of the men who will ls1hf fife wav for the American agri- cs1I1uriet to future of greater produc- tiof and ever reducing overhead.
 The American farmer is now pass ;n0 thru a barren and inhospitable wasfa. sort of Death Valley among his landn1arxs. Having been thru s:1cs, ex periences before, we may con fidentlv count on coming thru, as we aIwaVs haxe in the past, but we are living in 4 fools paradise ii by that token we hope to come out at the same ,, plaee we went in. We might as well admit once for all that the good old t:mAs of American agriculture, the free and easy times of cheap land continually Advancing in price, are gene f3yeVer
 The change of base was inevitable Hcncefortil, Instead of an agriculture conducted loosely, with one eye on the increment in land value, we must havn tight and rational agriculture based upon sound agronomy and ami nal hushandry, and knowledge o1 the cost of production and of market conditions. Henceforth we must con- duct our Farming operations so that they WiH yield profits on farming basis, rather than as side line in a speculative deal in real estate.
 This being the situation, what of the outlook?
 Worst Is Past.
 From the purely economic side the outlook is dark enough, tho there is reason to believe that the worst is now past. The Consuming public seems tC have no conception of the plight ir which the farmer has been left by the slump in farm prices. All that tho consumer knows is that retail prices have not come down to anywhere neal the pfe~war level, and he may assume that the farmer is still getting higt prices, when, as a matter of fact, he il getting smaller net returns for his products that he got in 1913, and 1T dollars that will buy only about hall as much per dollar as would his 1915 dollars.
 Take concrete example. The U. s Department of Agriculture has mad, an annual analysis of the business o. 100 representative farms in centra Indiana for the past eight years. II 1913 the average net income of thes' farms. the return for both labor anC capital, was $1 ,503. In 1920 the ne income was only $1 ,269. However this falling off does not measure tn, actual decline in the farmers income for in 1020 wholesale prices of com modifies other than farm products av eraQed more than two-and-a-hal times as high as the correspondin, prices in 1913 That is, it took a least S2.59 of this 1920 income to bu, Wkat dollar would have bought il 1913 Consequently, with tota smaller by over $200, and a dolla shrunk to forty cents, the averag 1920 Income of the group of farms il question would buy not more thal nne-third as much as would the aver age for 1913. On this basis, the sit pation looks something like this:
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