THE HOLDING MOVEMENT IN AGRICULTURE
Jesse E. Pope
During the latter half of the War and the eighteen months
succeeding the Armistice, American agriculture was highly pros-
perous. This was a period of inflation and fevered speculation.
Prices of everything the farmer had to sell reached unprecedented
heights, and the same is true of those things which he had to buy.
Inflation cast its glamour over everything; and while the farmer
was enjoying a high degree of prosperity much of it was more
apparent than real and all of it rested upon foundations of sand
because the farmer's operations were being carried on under con-
ditions which could not last. Land values doubled and trebled;
the standard of living greatly expanded; taxation mounted ; credit
was easy, and debts, instead of being paid off, were enlarged.
Every element entering into the cost of production was greatly
increased. The War had greatly stimulated agricultural produc-
tion and in the more remote agricultural regions of the world
huge stocks were piled up awaiting only means of transportation.
When the tide of high prices suddenly receded in 1920, the
American farmer found himself in the possession of large stocks
whose value, if turned into cash, would, in many cases, net him
less than nothing with which to meet his maturing obligations at
his bank. So terrible and sudden was the change in the agri-
cultural situation that the farmers, and many who were not
farmers, thought that it had been brought about by the wicked
plotting of unscrupulous men and that if the farmers could only
wait prices would rebound to their former height. The belief that
the collapse in prices was not due to fundamental causes, and that
holding was the way to meet the situation was the easier for the
farmer, because he had become used to much regulation and price
fixing during the War. “Stabilization,” “fair prices,” “orderly
marketing,” “gluts” and “over-speculation”—which, before the
War, he had scarcely heard—were now household words. More-
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