Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Current Economic Affairs (1924).pdf/57



The unbalancing of the ratio that previously obtained in the division of the national income, which was one of the consequences of the economic upheaval produced by the war, has had a disastrous effect upon the American farmer in the course of the post-war readjustment. Expression of this is made politically in the agrarian movement, especially in the wheat growing states, that is analogous to the populistic movement which reflected the dissatisfaction of an earlier time, also resulting from economic causes. The grounds for the present agrarian discontent are stated most concisely as the low prices received by the farmer for his products in the market; and the continued highness of the price of everything that he has to buy, which causes both his cost of living and the cost of producing his crops to continue high in relation to his proceeds. In other words, his margin between proceeds and cost of production is greatly contracted.

We are given to speaking of farmers as a whole as a major class of workers who are distinct from the town workers and are governed by different economic factors. While all of this is true, we must nevertheless make a distinction among the farmers themselves. Thus, the farmers of New York and New England who are largely engaged in raising dairy products, eggs and poultry