MACHINE HELD CAUSING FARM OWNER DECLINE
Machine Held Causing Farm Owner Decline Is Factor Forcing Them Off Farms, TNEC Is Told WASHINGTON, D. C—The machine, the depression, and the stork are adding millions to the Impoverished army of...
...One member of the committee declared it was so important to America that it should have crowded the European war news off the front page of pur newspapers...
...As it was 75.-515 men were displaced between 1923 and 1938...
...That stern warning, backed by a mass of facts and figures, was presented to Sen...
...As one of the witnesses said, "they will be either piling up on the farms or hunting jobs elsewhere," making the unemployment problem in both agriculture and industry "grow steadily worse...
...AFL Pres...
...Farmers are starkly fearful that their turn to go may be next...
...They continued the story of the effect of machines and "technological progress" on employment, which has been the hearings on various industries...
...Empty houses of people who used to make their living from the land mark the landscape...
...Green left with the committee five suggestions for alleviating the plight of men thrown out of work by technological improvements...
...In 1923...
...One letter from Tishomingo, Okla., said: "The land hog is all powerful...
...The local WPA and relief rolls .are loaded with them...
...he said, it took 74.000 workers to produce 45.200,000 tires while In 1939 II took 52,000,000 workers to produce 57,000,000 tires...
...We believe," he said, "congress should do which is necessary to bring about a national economy that will put our unemployed back to work on a basis . . . that will bring about sufficient and adequate purchasing power to provide for continuing steady employment and prosperity in this nation...
...They were: 1—More complete data on employment, labor costs, productivity, wages and hours...
...This represented an increase of 2fi per cent In production and a decrease of 30 per cent In employment...
...Of every 100 employed in 1870, the Jobs of 53 were on farms, compared to only 21 in 1930, the last census year...
...Great, glaciers, originating in Norway, pushed southward across the North sea and covered Germany with soil torn down from Scandinavian mountains...
...Thomas Kennedy, secretary-treasurer of the United Mine Workers (CIO) and Green's successor in that position, discussed the force of technology in the coal industry...
...4—Special consideration to productive workers in their share in the return from technological improvements...
...Joseph C. O'Mahoney's monopoly committee last week by agricultural authorities...
...William Green and two representatives of CIO unions appear-ed before the committee here to add their testimony to the story of men and machines...
...A stream of distressed humanity seeks outlet to the West in Arizona and California...
...Machine Held Causing Farm Owner Decline Is Factor Forcing Them Off Farms, TNEC Is Told WASHINGTON, D. C—The machine, the depression, and the stork are adding millions to the Impoverished army of unemployed farmers and are driving them to cities to compete for jobs with the millions of unemployed industrial workers...
...he said...
...LAND HAS MOVED Much of northern Germany once was Scandinavian soil...
...Towns are crowded with the displaced...
...Boiled down, their testimony shows: Proportion Lower That, "since the earliest settlement of this country," farming has provided a constantly decreasing proportion of the total jobs...
...This farm chapter of the story was about the most shocking of all...
...Production Up Labor productivity in the mines, he said, has increased from 2.98 tons per man per day in 1900 to 4.R tons per man per day for the much shorter work day of 1938, an increase of 23.9 per cent...
...Taylor read to the committee letters written by desperate farm folks to newspaper editors...
...Despite the decrease in the number of farm Jobs, "more people are living on farms now than at any time In our history," and within the next 20 years our farm population will increase by at least 4.000,000 people of "working age," even if farm men and women keep moving to cities at the present rate...
...Such advances would have eliminated 131.000 jobR in the bituminous mines of the country but for the reduction of hours and the number of days worked per week...
...Tractors Come In He said that "landlords replace their tenants with tractors and hired laborers...
...Tenants with sufficient resources buy tractors, rent a second farm, operate them both, and another American farm family has been cut from the land...
...5—Exhaustive consideration of employment opportunities on a national basis...
...3—Increase of the national income by 10 billion dollars...
...Thomas F. Burns, vice president of the United Rubber Workers (CIO), described the effect of machines In his Industry...
...The part played by the machine in aggravating' these tendencies was described by Paul S. Taylor, University of California professor who is well known for his studies of the California farm problem pictured in "The Grapes of Wrath...
...Only one force is operating to preserve employment in the rubber Industry, Burns said, and that Is the organized labor movement which "by Its effort to maintain a shorter work day at a decent wage, saved tens of thousands of rubber workers as solvent members of their respective communities...
...The first two witnesses were Agrl-cutuie department officials...
...2—Further shortening of the work week...
...So more and more farm folks will be looking for farm jobs which are not there, while millions of others leave to look for city jobs which may not exist...
...He buys a tractor and gets possession of all the land in a community, and, with a little hired help, farms all the land and drives his neighbors off It to starve...
Vol. 10 • May 1940 • No. 18
