Rebuttal of the Populist complaints
J. Laurence Laughlin, "Causes of Agricultural
Unrest," Atlantic Monthly
(November, 1896)
Of
course, the farmer who has overtraded, or expanded his operation beyond his
means, in a time of commercial depression is affected just as anyone else is in
like conditions.
The
simple fact that we produce more wheat than we consume, and that, consequently,
the price of the whole crop is determined, not by the markets within this
country, but by the world-markets, is sufficient to put wheat, as regards its
price, in a different class from those articles whose markets are local. . . .
And it need not be said that many wheat-growing farmers make little or no
allowance for events beyond their limited range of local information. . . .
The
sudden enlargement of the supply without any corresponding increase of demand
produced that alarming fall in the price of wheat which has been made the
farmer's excuse for thinking that silver is the magic panacea for all his ills.
. . .
Feeling
the coils of some mysterious power about them, the farmers, in all honesty,
have attributed their misfortunes to the "constriction" in prices,
caused, as they think, not by an increased production of wheat throughout the
world, but by the "scarcity of gold!"