rains were
likewise affected. Middling cotton which had sold at eight and a half
cents a pound in 1893, dropped below seven cents the following year,
recovered until it reached nearly eight cents in 1896, and was at its
lowest in 1898 at just under six cents. Of all the marketable products
of the farm, cattle, hay, and hogs alone maintained the price level
of the decade prior to 1892. Average prices, moreover, do not fully
indicate the small return which many farmers received. In December,
1891, for instance, the average value of a bushel of corn was about
forty cents, but in Nebraska, on January 1, 1892, corn brought only
twenty-six cents. When, a few years later, corn was worth, according to
the statistics, just over twenty-one cents, it was literally cheaper to
burn it in Kansas or Nebraska than to cart it to town, sell it, and
buy coal with the money received; and this is just what hundreds of
despairing farmers did. Even crop shortage did little to increase the
price of the grain that was raised. When a drought seriously diminished
the returns in Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan in 1895, the importation from
States farther west prevented any rise in price.

Prices dropped, but the interest on mortgages remained the same. One
hundred and seventy-four bushels of wheat would pay the interest at 8
per cent on a $2000 mortgage in 1888, when the price of wheat was higher
than it had been for ten years and higher than it was to be again for
a dozen years. In 1894 or 1895 when the price was hovering around fifty
cents, it took 320 bushels to pay the same interest. Frequently the
interest was higher than 8 per cent, and outrageous commissions
on renewals increased the burden of the farmer. The result was one
foreclosure after another. The mortgage shark was identified as the
servant of the "Wall Street Octopus," and between them there was
little hope for the farmer. In Kansas, according to a contemporary
investigator,* "the whole western third of the State was settled by a
boom in farm lands. Multitudes of settlers took claims without means of
their own, expecting to pay for the land from the immediate profits of
farming. Multitudes of them mortgaged the land for improvements, and
multitudes more expended the proceeds of mortgages in living. When it
was found that the proceeds of farming in that part of the State were
very uncertain, at best, the mortgages became due. And in many instances
those who had been nominally owners rem