People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 October 1896 — OUR FARMING LAND. [ARTICLE]

OUR FARMING LAND.

WOEFUL DEPRECIATION IN PRICES THEREFOR. Mark Hanna and His Crowd of Labor Crushers Imagine That Declining Values Keep the Agriculturists—A Tell Tale Senate Report. According to the Senate report on “Agricultural Depression,” in Illinois improved lands fell from $20.81 in 1873 to sll.lß in 1892; wheat fell in the same time from sl.lO to 69 cents a bushel; cattle dropped nearly 60 per cent; horses and mules went below that; hogs fell 50 per cent, and sheep 33 per cent. In Nebraska improved lands have fallen more than 20 per cent since 1885 and live stock about 40 per cent. In Kansas the tenant farmers increased 30,563. In the Pacific and mountain states and the territories, the number of tenant farmers increased 20,350. In the Middle states the number of owning farmers decreased 42,304, and the tenants increased 24,075. In fifteen Southern states there was an increase’of 390,275 tenant farmers. The Middle West, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois gives evidence of the same change, and the group lost 31,259 owning farmers and gained 48,864 tenant farmers. In Illinois the tenants increased to 36.72 per cent of the whole. In eight states of the Northwest the number of tenant farmers increased 108,507. In Pennsylvania farm lands have fallen 25 to 30 per cent in less than twenty years. In the New England states, farm lands have fallen 30 per cent since 1875, In forty-seven states and territories the number of tenant farmers increased 699,337. In 1880, 25.62 per cent of the farms were cultivated by tenants, in 1890. 34.12 per cent of the farm families were ten ante. According to the report of the secretary of agriculture for 1893 the value o* ax average acre of wheat that year in the United States was $6.16, and the cost of raising it was $11.48 —a net loss to the wheat-growers of this country of $5.32 for every acre cultivated that year. The report also says the average annual value of an acre of wheat for the fourteen years from 1880 to 1893, inclusive. was only $9.73, while it cost to raise it per acre $11.48 —a net annual lose to the farmers of the United States of $1.75 for every acre of wheat produced since 1879. The same report shows that the cost of raising an acre of corn in 1893 was sll-71, and that the value of an acre of corn that year was $8.21.