Economic essays

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Identifikator:: 1753623200

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136107

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Economic essays

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: viii, 368 S.; Ill., graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Title:: The holding movement in agriculture / Jesse E. Pope

Collection:: Economics Books

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- 9244

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