Prices of articles of farm production on farms, 1877 to 1904. [Official Figures.] Wool, per pound. Coarse. Milk, per quart. Grain, Chicago to New York, and average rates, in cents, per bushel. [From Bulletin No. 15, Revised. Miscellaneous Series, of the Division of Statistics.] Live stock and dressed meats, Chicago to New York. Average freight rates, in cents, per 100 pounds. Average freight rates on grain, flour, and provisions, in cents per 100 pounds, through from Chicago to European ports, by all rail to seaboard and thence by steamers, from 1894 to 1903. Average annual freight rates from 1870 to 1903. VALUE OF THE FACTORY TO THE FARMER. Practical and Statistical Evidence that Manufacturing Establishments Increase the Earnings of Farmers in the Section Where Located and Advance the Permanent Value of Farm Properties— A Comparison of Conditions in the Manufacturing and Nonmanufacturing Sections, Based Upon Official Figures. The table here presented illustrates by figures taken from official reports the value to the farmer of the location of manufacturing industries in his immediate vicinity. That the existence of a great manufacturing industry in the country-an industry which employs 5 million people and pays wages and salaries amounting to 22 billions of dollars per anuum-is of great value to the farming interests goes without saying, but that the location of the factory in the immediate vicinity of the farm adds to the value of that farm and to the earnings of those who own or occupy it is also true. Mr. McKinley remarked in the House of Representatives in the discussions of the Fiftieth Congress that "the establishment of a furnace or factory or mill in any neighborhood has the effect at once to enhance the value of all property and all values for miles surrounding it;" and Thomas B. Reed, of Maine, inquired, "Which is it better for the farmer to do-send his surplus a thousand miles to the seacoast, 3,000 miles across the water and sell it to the mechanic who gets less wages, or sell it right here at home to the mechanic who gets more wages?" "Every farmer knows," said Representative Brewer, of Michigan, in the Fiftieth Congress, "that he cannot send to foreigners his potatoes, vegetables and many other things which he grows upon the farm and that he must rely upon the home market for the same, and this is why the lands in rough and rocky New England and sterile New Jersey are more valuable than are fertile lands in Michigan and Minnesota.' "The extraordinary effect," said President Grant, in a message to Congress, "produced in our country by a resort to diversified occupations has built a market for the products of fertile lands destined for the seaboard and the markets of the world. The American system of locating various and extensive manufactories next to the plow and the pasture and adding connecting railroads and steamboats has produced in our distant interior country a result noticeable by the intelligent portions of all commercial nations." In The table which follows, made up from official figures, is intended to illustrate, in some degree, the effect upon the farm and its occupant of the proximity of manufacturing industries. preparing this table that part of the United States lying north of the Potomac and Ohio rivers and east of the Mississippi has been taken as the chief manufacturing section of the country, and the value of the farm lands and farm products in that section is contrasted with that in the other part of the United States, which has comparatively little manufacturing and may be termed the agricultural but non-manufacturing section. The portion of the United States designated as the manufacturing section in this table and discussion, then, includes all of the New England and Middle States and Maryland, District of Columbia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan. This manufacturing section contains, speaking in round terms, one-half (50.9 per cent) of the population of the United States, while the agricultural but non-manufacturing section, lying south of the Potomac and Ohio rivers and west of the Mississippi, contains the other half (49.1 per cent.) of the population. In the section north of the Potomac and Ohio rivers and east of the Mississippi is produced 77 per cent. of the manufactures of the country, and in the other section 23 per cent., as shown by the reports of the census of 1900, The |