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Depressions in agriculture. Illinois, the richest agricultural state in the United States and for that reason a criterion for the others, is shown by the statistics of the State board of Agricultural for 1886 to have over three-fourths of its farms mortgaged, and that the crops for the last five years have not paid the cost of production! Illinois is the greatest corn producing State in the Union and the statistics given by the state Board if Agriculture on that crop is as follows:
For the year 1882 at a loss of............$1,273,371.00
For the year 1883 at a loss of............$8,621,440.00
For the year 1884 at a loss of............$11,780,544.00
For the year 1885 at a loss of............$10,831,701.00
For the year 1886 at a loss of..............$9,070,209.00
Total loss in five years....................$51,577,575.00
The bureau also states that more than to-thirds of the farms which have suffered these losses are mortgaged. Investigation shows the same condition exists in every State. Statistics show that the condition of the farming class, as a class, is far worse than it was twenty or thirty years ago. The America farmer as a class is enslaved by mortgages, and rapidly drifting into peasantry and serfdom agriculture. Meanwhile the stupendously increasing aggregation of wealth into the hands of a few is going on.
In manufacture statistics it is shown that while the number of manufactures are diminishing from 10 to 30 pre cent every year the remainder are increasing their wealth enormously, and that while wages of labor have been diminishing yearly the number of workers wanting work and unable to procure it have rapidly increased. The Unites States census for 1880, gives in Census Bulletin 302 elaborate details of capital invested, number of persons employed, the amount of wages paid, value of materials used, the value of all establishments of manufacturing industry, gas excepted, in each of the States and Territories as follows:
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