BOB'S COMMITTEE PROBES INTO CAUSES OF FARM ILLS
Bob's Committee Probes Into Causes of Farm Ills Wallace Sees Credit Rill As One Approach to Problem WASHINGTON, D. C—Causes of farm distress, especially the economic factors which are driving...
...To tackle one of them ti not enough...
...In its investigation the LaFollette committee exposed the hardships and exploitation of farm people, who had lost their land and were forced to seek employment from large commercialized farming interests organized on a huge corporate basis...
...Bob's Committee Probes Into Causes of Farm Ills Wallace Sees Credit Rill As One Approach to Problem WASHINGTON, D. C—Causes of farm distress, especially the economic factors which are driving farmers off the land, went under the microscope of the LaFollette civil liberties committee last week with Wisconsin's Sen...
...Secretary of Agriculture Wallace, testifying as the first of the line of expert witnesses, recommended among other measures the enactment of the farm bill of which Bob LaFollette Is a co-author...
...Bad weather, farm depression, and soft credit policies of the...
...Robert M. LaFollette Jr., in charge...
...There are ominous signs that farming as a way of life is threatened...
...1920 have placed them in a position where, under present law, there would seem to be no effective means of preventing them from being added to the ranks of the unemployed...
...The LaFollette civil liberties committee recently concluded investigations in California where It gathered a mass of evidence on farm conditions dramatized in John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath...
...Commenting on this phase of Wallace's testimony, Bob La Follette said: "Long before the crash In 1020 and ever -inec, I have never permitted an opportunity to pass without pointing out that this economic crisis began in agriculture with the farmer's loss of his fair share of the national income and it will not end until the farmer attains real buying power measured in terms of the actual wealth he produces in the form of goods and services...
...In discussing the need for enactment of this measure, Wallace declared that "thousands of competent, hard-working farmers, with the best kind of altitude towards paying their obligations, are delinquent and threatened with foreclosure through no fault of their own...
...I am proud to be a co-author of the bill S.3509l, which when enacted into law, will establish a fair farm credit and debt adjustment system...
...A study of agricultural distress In this country today will convince anyone that it has its roots in two fundamental conditions—burdensome debts and low commodity prices...
...It has long been my conviction that if we are to attack the problem of the farmer, we will have to meet both of these issues squarely...
Vol. 10 • May 1940 • No. 20
