Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/745

 -1902] Owners and tenants; independence of the farmer. 713 60 per cent, of operating owners are over 45 years of age. In other words, there is a steady progress from the ranks of labourers up through tenancy to ownership. This certainly does not represent a dangerous reaction. Despite wide variations in individual crops, the last five years have been years of large yields and good prices. Even the serious failure in the Indian corn crop in 1901 did not materially affect the situation, for this reverse was balanced by heavy crops in the other cereals, while it kept corn prices high for the corn crop of 1902. Only four times prior to 1897 did the wheat crop reach 500,000,000 bushels. In the last six years the crop has exceeded that amount each year, and in 1901 reached the unprecedented total of 750,000,000 bushels; while the range of prices has been higher than under the smaller crops of the three previous years. In the matter of cotton the conditions have been much the same. The average crop for the last five years has been over 10,500,000 bales, and in two years the crop was over 11,000,000, compared with crops ranging in the ten years previous from 6,500,000 to a maximum of less than 10,000,000 bales. Such statistics, however, give a less vivid idea of the recent change in western conditions than facts for which no accurate figures can be given. The great change has been the raising of the farmers from a condition of burdensome debt to economic independence. In the decade from 1880 to 1890 millions of acres were taken up by settlers, who burdened themselves with mortgages both for the purchase price and the working capital, and found themselves, before they became firmly established, facing an agricultural depression of almost unprecedented proportions. The pressure of interest payments at a time when crops could hardly be sold at a profit accounts largely for the great hold of the free-silver movement in the campaign of 1896. In the last few years, however, mortgages have been paid off rapidly, while the enforced economy of the preceding years made saving out of increased income easy. The wheat-grower is no longer obliged to sell his crop at once or to mortgage it before harvest. He is in a position of economic solvency, with money laid by. It is this fact that gives more than a passing significance to the prosperity of the West. Mere fluctuation from time to time in farming incomes would hardly warrant extended comment ; but the use made of the increased income, namely, the payment of debts, is sure to prove of permanent importance. The surplus may be dissipated, new settlers may incur new debts, but hundreds of thousands of the settlers of the earlier decade are now for the first time in a position to bear reverses. At last they are really in possession of free homes. We may now consider the industrial expansion. The census of 1900 attempts to determine the relation of manufactured to agricultural products in money value, and to establish the excess of the former, even after making proper deductions for the value of the raw materials. CH. XXII.