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46 proceeds and costs he should find a proper remuneration for his own work. If then the ultimate margin does not show a proper return on the capital invested the latter has not been economically as fruitful as should have been. In determining that, however, he must consider the average of a series of years, for inevitably there will be good years and bad years. In all of this the economics of the farmer are identical with those of the owners of railways, factories, and of stocks of goods for distribution. The fruit of all capital goods is borne in the same way. Primarily the return is determined by the markets for the products, which are entirely outside of the influence of any single group of producers. In international markets, such as wheat, the price is determined by the actions and reactions of producers and consumers all over the world.

The primary cause for the recent and present troubles of the farmers who raise wheat and hogs is that they have not been getting high enough prices for their products, which is ascribable to international market conditions. The difficulties of the farmers who produce those things grow out of the European situation. In the words of Dr. B. M. Anderson, Jr., in the Chase Economic Bulletin of August 10, 1923:

Agriculture has become an over-expanded industry, not primarily because it has itself expanded, but because the manufacturing activity of the world has contracted. In the case of cotton there has been a corresponding contraction of agricultural output, due, of course, to the boll weevil. In the case of wheat, there has been an actual expansion of the world’s output; increased production in Canada, the United States, and other places more than compensating for the decreased production in Russia and the Danubian countries. By and large, however, the difficulty is contraction of manufacturing in the world’s manufacturing center. Western Europe, which before the war was the world’s great center of manufacturing activity and the world’s great market for farm products and raw materials, has lost her