trusted friends or in the intimacy of home life.

Our last two illustrations bring the present Emperor on the scene, the occasion being the visit of reconciliation, paid by the Kaiser after the ungracious rupture of relationship, to the greatest of his subjects, on the latter's eightieth birthday. Advantage was taken of the day by the Emperor to proceed to Friedrichsruh, with a representation of the army, and to present the Prince with a sword, on behalf of the Fatherland which he had restored

as singularly happy. Those that remain of his household must feel keenly the loss they have suffered, while his death will carry unaffected sorrow into many a German home. As yet, his removal from these scenes is too recent dispassionately to estimate his character or adequately to appraise his life-work. It may be said, however, that he had no peer as a statesman, for to keen foresight and acute intelligence he possessed the practical gifts of a Cromwell -a strong ruling hand, added to the positive merits, in his case,

and elevated into a mighty and united nation. The picture (page 5) represents the Emperor addressing Bismarck just before presenting the sword, in view of the contingent of the army drawn up on the parade ground. That on page 4 represents the same distinguished personages in conversation under the trees in the grounds of Friedrichsruh.

Bismarck leaves behind him one daughter and two sons, the former, rather than the latter, inheriting in a high degree much of her eminent father's gifts. His family life was most exemplary, as well

of an inflexible and imperious will. In the broader vision of coming years, even his enemies, of whom he had more than his share, will yet recognize and applaud his work. They will, moreover, see in him, not merely a man of strong prejudices and uncertain temper, but a bluff, fearless, outspoken yet able servant of his country. In this sturdy patriot, the German nation loses the most illustrious of her sons. Nor will his compatriots in America be the least genuine of his mourners, or be wanting in reverence for his memory. G. M. A.

T would be difficult to conceive a clearer

I'

demonstration of the dependence of national prosperity upon the condition of the farmer than is afforded by the latest publications of the Treasury Department, which show that of exports during the year ending with June last, aggregating so great a value as $1,210,000,000, no less than $855,000,000, or 71 per cent., must be credited directly to the farm.

This is $302,000,000 more than was derived from that source in 1894-95 when prices for farm products were at the lowest level. Such increase in the aggregate value of agricultural products exported is partly due to an increase in volume, but in much greater degree to advances in unit values, as in 1894-95 wheat was selling in the farm markets for less than half the price received three years later, while cattle, horses, and other staple products brought from a third more to twice as much as three years earlier. And this, neither because of changes in the duties levied upon imports, as contended by one class of leaders, nor because of changes in the relative value of two metals, as another class has taught was absolutely necessary to any advance in prices, nor yet to any loss of purchasing power on the part of gold, as it still commands as much of the product of either mine, forge or factory as in 1894-95; but because the consuming element of the "breadeating world," comprising the populations of European lineage, has at last overtaken, and even outrun, the enormous production of the fields resulting from a succession of seasons, extending from 1882 to 1896, during the great majority of which atmospheric conditions were propitious. So favorable were they over world-wide areas that of fifteen world wheat harvests no less than eleven gave acre yields which, combined, were more than six per cent. above the 12.7 bushels average resulting from the 27 harvests garnered in the same regions since 1870, while the four underaverage harvests of the period, gave acre yields which were, in the aggregate, but three per cent. below such 27-years' average. Exceptionally remarkable were the atmospheric conditions, as affecting soil production, which obtained in the last third of the 15-year period. During each of the five years preceding 1897, without any

increase of the area employed in growing either wheat or rye, the "bread-eating world" was enabled to secure an extraordinary supply of wheat of 160,000,000 bushels per annum, because of acre yields that, combined, were more than eight per cent. above the 27-years' average. Concurrent rye crops were even more above the average in acre yields, thus adding in even greater degree to that third of the world's bread grown upon the rye fields.

Is it strange that under such conditions prices should fall to an unremunerative level? Is it strange, the “bread-eaters » having increased nearly a fifth since the last materially deficient world harvests were garnered at the close of the eighth decade, and the bread-bearing acres not increasing since 1884, that prices should rise greatly after the harvesting of a crop seven per cent. below the average in acre yield in 1897 ?

If the demand for and the power to grow bread have assumed such relations that a single world crop diverging downwards in acre yields in smaller ratio than the five preceding had varied in the opposite direction could advance prices in the manner seen after the harvest of 1897, what level would prices be likely to reach should the "bread-eating world" harvest two crops, one immediately succeeding the other, giving yields 12 per cent. below the average, as did those of 1875 and 1876 ?

The falls in the price for wheat, so continuous from 1882 to 1896, as well as declines in prices for other food staples, have been natural and inevitable, as have the advances obtaining during the last two years. Therefore, we need not attribute the prosperity of the farmer, and the resulting prosperity of the nation, to such an ephemeral incident as the operations of Mr. Joseph Leiter upon the produce exchange. Such operations were impossible without such shrinkage in the world's wheat supply as occurred in 1897. Mr. Leiter's operations, and the rise in price erroneously attributed thereto, resulted from a wheat crop which gave an aggregate outturn of but 1,900,000,000 bushels from the areas inhabited by the populations of European lineage as against aggregates from the preceding five harvests averaging 2,180,000,000 bushels. That is, the "bread-eating world's" (the

world inhabited by bread-eaters of European blood) outturn of wheat in 1897 was 280,000,000 bushels below the annual average from the same fields in the preceding five years, and more than 300,000,000 bushels below world requirements. Under such conditions a material advance in price was inevitable, as was the entire dissipation of all reserves, and the making of large drafts upon the harvests of 1898 at an exceptionally early day; these conditions indicating that the grain harvested in 1898 must cover the consumption of more than twelve months. With such conditions obtaining Mr. Leiter's operations resembled those of the late lamented Mrs. Partington on the ocean's shore.

Like all abnormal disturbances of the relations of supply and demand those of the Leiter deal caused wide and destructive, if temporary, price fluctuations which rendered it impossible to safely Ideal in real wheat without resort to the objectionable "hedging" process which multiplies the apparent supply. At times some farmers may have derived an advantage from the fluctuations caused; but the result to wheat-growers, as a whole, has been injurious in the extreme, as the collapse came when the world was about to harvest a crop which, while promising to be somewhat above an average in acre yield, was likely to prove insufficient by reason of an existing acreage deficiency. This collapse "knocked the bottom out of prices," and they are likely to be months in regaining the level that would have been maintained but for this "optionbred" disaster. Corners, children of the detestable "futures" system, all affect prices disastrously when they collapse; as collapse they must until great scarcity obtains.

The harvesting of a deficient world crop and the evolution of the pernicious system of "option" trading were both essential to the operations of Mr. Leiter. Those who have attempted to manage such operations in the past have invariably paid the penalty in part due to their efforts to disturb natural laws; and it is to be hoped they will in the future, although such penalties have not a tenth the restraining effect so desirable from a commercial as well as a moral standpoint. But for the war with Spain the Leiter failure would have come in March instead of June, and prices would have

neither advanced above a normal level, nor been so long in recovering.

All classes in America experienced "hard times" when wheat and other soil products were selling below the cost of production, and we were treated to endless disquisitions intended to prove that the existing depression was due either to too little duty upon imports, or to too little silver in the machinery of exchange. Despite these diverse and wholly irreconcilable views just as soon as prices for soil products advanced to a level that restored, even in part, the purchasing power of the farmer, the labor engaged in manufacture, mining, transportation and other industries found more constant employment with a consequent increase of purchasing power on the part of all employed either in production, distribution, or in personal or professional service. The foundation of the prosperity that has returned to the nation was a higher price level for the products of the world's basic industry, and with the coming of remunerative prices for the products of the farm confidence was restored; hoards came into sight; money became abundant and relatively cheap; failures decreased both in number and in amounts involved; and all are once more hopeful, but anxiously asking how long these "good times" are to last.

If it is true that existing prosperous conditions result neither from changes in the currency, nor yet from the imposing of higher duties upon imports, but are due simply and solely to better prices for soil products, and are but corollaries of changes favorably affecting the basic industry which directly employs 37 per cent. of the nation's working force, and indirectly a much larger proportion whenever the farmer has the power to purchase liberally of the products and services of others, then it is not such a difficult matter to form satisfactory conclusions as to the probable duration of prosperous conditions.

There is a very generally held belief, if entirely baseless, that cycles of prosperity and cycles of "hard times" follow each other with foreordained regularity, and to those entertaining such belief facts are of as little value as to those who believe that as men exist without their own volition, the power that brought them into the world will provide the requisite food. Notwithstanding such

beliefs it is demonstrable that the recent over-abundance of the great food staples of the temperate zones, and consequent low prices and world-wide agricultural distress, are results that necessarily followed variations, in a particular direction, of atmospheric conditions, although, within certain well-defined limits, such conditions are among the most stable of natural phenomena. This is evidenced by the fact that, taking a field as wide as the regions inhabited by the bread-eating populations of European blood, the last 27 wheat harvests have given acre yields averaging 12.7 bushels, and that from this median line acre yields have varied but 12 per cent. in the downward direction and 11.9 per cent. in the opposite one, while in but one-third of the 27 years has the yield varied as much as seven per cent. from the mean.

The law of averages being inexorable, we may, when we have determined the average, safely assume that the future will, for periods long enough to equilibrate climatic variations, produce like results in soil production, although such results may be modified very slightly by improvements in culture and fertilization. Such improvements must, from the very nature of the case, be confined to an infinitesimal portion of the fields of the "bread-eating world" during the coming. 27 years, and are quite certain to be offset in whole or in part by a somewhat mythical deterioration of the world's acres when cropped without fertilization. Both these factors are too insignificant to be worth considering, as but a small portion of the bread-bearing areas are either within the sphere of improvement, or that of material deterioration,-if there is such a sphere outside the Central Asiatic regions where the earth is being desiccated by profound climatic changes.

As long ago as 1891, the present writer stated that whenever the "bread-eating world" should have a crop of wheat not above an average in acre yield, immediately following another of like character, or should have a single crop materially below the average in yield (the world's wheat crop of 1891' was about 2 per cent. above the average), prices would rise greatly, and remain remunerative till large reserves could be reconstituted. This conclusion was based upon the results of an investigation showing that the bread-grain area of the world was even

then largely deficient when yields were but average ones, and the knowledge that at no time in the historical past have annual additions to the world's food-bearing lands equalled, for any considerable number of years, requirements in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Notwithstanding the recent existence of overabundant supplies of the bread-making grains, and consequent low prices, such acreage deficit has continued to increase in the measure of the requirements of the units added to the bread-eating populations since 1884, as in thirteen years there has not been an increase in the aggregate acreage employed in 1884 in growing the breadmaking grains. Coupled with the related. facts that each year's addition to the requirements for bread is equivalent to the net product from more than 4,300,000 acres; that the acreage deficit now greatly exceeds fifty million acres, and that in no ten years of its past has the world been able to add thirty million acres to the bread-bearing lands, existing conditions are such as to insure a very long, if not unending, period when the demand for all the great food staples shall be brisk, prices remunerative, and the tendency steadily towards a higher price level.

Naturally, the reader will ask how it is that with a great and constantly growing acreage deficit supplies have been so over-abundant and prices so very low as to cause world-wide agricultural distress. It is not difficult to account for such anomalous conditions, both clearly and logically, and that, too, without resorting to the untenable hypothesis of either the ultra protectionist, or the advocate of a particular ratio in the constituent parts of the machinery of exchange. The "bread-eating world" (the countries inhabited by the bread-eating peoples of European lineage) harvested during the fifteen years ending with 1896 fifteen crops of wheat of which eleven gave acre yields so much above a twenty-seven years' average of 12.7 bushels that the over-average product of wheat much exceeded 1,000,000,000 bushels. A large part of the over-average product of such harvests as those of 1882, 1884 and 1887 was brought over into the nineties to supplement the enormous world harvests of 1892, 1893, 1894, 1895 and 1896 (five crops in succession giving yields exceeding the average by eight per cent.), and to make good in great part the defect in the