"
A murmur of amazement rose from the audience. Kenneth waited until it
had subsided.
"This seems surprising, at first," he said, "and proves how startling
aggregate figures are. You must remember I have covered five years in
this estimate, as did Mr. Hopkins in his, and if you will figure it out
you will see that the yearly average of earnings is about six hundred
dollars to each farmer. That is a good showing, for we have a wealthy
district; but it is not surprising when reduced to that basis. Mr.
Hopkins slates that the farmers of this district received three
thousand, seven hundred and eighty-three dollars during the last five
years for advertising signs. Let us examine these figures. One-fifth of
that sum is seven hundred and fifty-six dollars and sixty cents as the
income to you per year. We have, in this district, twenty-five hundred
farmers according to the latest reports of the Bureau of Statistics, and
dividing seven hundred and fifty-six dollars and sixty cents by
twenty-five hundred, we find that each farmer receives an average of
thirty and one-quarter cents per year for allowing his fences and
buildings to be smothered in lurid advertising signs. So we find that
the money received by the farmers from the advertising amounts to about
one-quarter of one per cent of their income, a matter so insignificant
that it cannot affect them materially, one way or another.
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