Can the Farm Survive?
706 CAN THE FARM SURVIVE? THE Department of Agriculture reports a fairly general migration from the farm to the city during 1926. It is estimated that 649,000 persons substituted pavements...
...Though farming is an industry in the primordial sense, it is not normally industrial in the modern, machine-made sense...
...The rural industry is as yet quite unconscious of the entire significance of cooperation...
...But it seems to us that Mr...
...Loyalty to its exigencies may be, in the ultimate analysis, the only enduring recipe of success...
...One may doubt that any such scheme can have immediate restorative effects...
...Despite the fact that a considerable percentage of the number is made up of southern Negroes seeking the rewards of labor under industrial conditions, the decrease is serious enough to justify speculation about the time when the United States will no longer be able to produce foodstuffs in sufficient quantities...
...Mid-western pressure upon the government has no prospect of forcing through such radical legislation as was propounded in Congress last year, or of bringing into being a strong separate political movement...
...During the "era of expansion" which followed the war, acreage was thought of in vast figures: machinery calculated to enable one man to cultivate extensive areas took the place of livestock and the patient routine of daily growth...
...In short, it is quite likely that both personnel and equipment have deteriorated on the farm...
...A healthful sign may be discerned in the fact that the farmers themselves seem to have the most complete realization of the difficulty...
...707...
...Meanwhile, it seems to us, much first-rate thinking has been done regarding certain elemental economic facts in the conduct of farming...
...The announcement that Senator Fess, familiar with Ohio agriculture through personal experience, is formulating a plan for relief, indicates that the Republican party hopes to produce a salutary and popular measure before the next elections occur...
...The Senator's plan, which is not to be developed until the farmer's viewpoint has been diligently analyzed by various congressional inquirers, seems to repose upon the idea that the government can subsidize the cooperative movement into efficient activity...
...It is estimated that 649,000 persons substituted pavements for the greensward, each portion of the country furnishing its quota...
...Now it is being observed again and again that while machinery consumes nothing which the farmer grows, it adds nothing to what the farmer grows...
...Men are turning back through history to observe how constantly periods of extensive cultivation were also periods of agricultural decline...
...Apparently, however, Washington is aware that something more than bureaus of information or official land banking is needed...
...Fess proposes what is really a step in the right direction, rather than—in the manner of McNary-Haughenism—a leap to safety in the wrong direction...
...Meanwhile the continuing economic weakness of agricultural commerce has probably led to curtailment of expenditures for pedigreed stock, soil foods and adequate buildings...
Vol. 5 • May 1927 • No. 26
