THE CHOICE WE FACE
Patton, James
The Choice We Face By JAMES PATTON OUR TIME is a time of great events, and a time of change. I think that somewhere in the future, how far away from us it is hard to say, historians will begin to...
...At the same time this was happening farms of the smaller size were decreasing in number...
...They showed once and for all that the people as a whole can use Government to right wrongs...
...It is only in the great staple crops that opportunity exists even for efficiency in the narrow sense used by proponents of large farm units...
...The process of pushing farmers off the land was accelerated by an AAA system that rewarded large farmers very heavily and turned Government help itself into a vested interest that further entrenched large owners...
...A main argument for the so-called "efficiency" of the big farm is that it can take advantage of new machinery that cuts production costs...
...Key To The Solution . What, then, would the National Farmers Union like to see done ? The real key is in the firm and unequivocal establishment of a national land policy with the preservation of the family-type farm as its base...
...No longer is it possible just to pick up stakes and move on farther West...
...On the other hand, the Farm Security Administration system, through rehabilitation and tenant purchase loans, actually was helping to establish tenants on the land as family-type farm owners...
...This would mean that the principles followed by the Farm Security Administration, both in its tenant purchase and rehabilitation programs, would be expanded and made the dominant agricultural credit principles of the country...
...What this means in terms of total land in agriculture and of total agricultural income is clear...
...Between 1910 and 1940 the most striking increase in any category of farms in the United States Was of farms 1,000 acres or more in size...
...In no part of our economy do we face a sharper choice than in agriculture...
...I think that somewhere in the future, how far away from us it is hard to say, historians will begin to look upon the present as one of the great crossroads of history...
...The opportunity to take part in cooperative medical service needs to be made open for every farm family...
...A rounded program for a better life for farmers is required...
...Such a program could also go far toward extending modern soil conservation practices among farmers too poor to follow them now, and could well promote production for abundance far more satisfactorily than a crude across-the-board reliance on the price system or straight-out cash benefits...
...In fact, the decrease in number of farms of between 20 to 260 acres during those three decades amounted to nearly 700,000—to be exact, 694,781 farms...
...And even then we did not face all of them, nor did we change the economic order sufficiently to do more than alleviate some of its worst evils...
...In other words...
...Only a relatively small number of average family farmers own more than 250 acres...
...For example, the advantages of rural electrification ought to be made available to every farm family in the United States, through expansion of the work of the Rural Electrification Administration...
...There is no reason why they cannot form cooperatives to cut marketing costs, to cut the costs of things they have to buy, to divide the use of purebred boars and buHs, and to perform numerous other economic Junctions that would put them on a competitive basis with large farms...
...There is no special reason why small farmers cannot band together to use such machinery in the same way...
...Now, how can these apparently contradictory trends be explained ? It seems to me the answer is easy...
...Major Trends In Conflict At all events, the closing of the frontier has thrown us back on our own resources of intelligence as well as of nature...
...It is much more difficult, however, for us to realize that we stand at a turning-point in the history of our own country, of our own state, and of our own community...
...On the other: hand, I do not believe that I am over-confident of attaining the objectives I have mentioned briefly here...
...If these farms had to pay their laborers an adequate living wage, it is highly doubtful that they, could show greater "economic efficiency" than small farms...
...In 1910 there were 50,135 of these farms...
...The first step, then, might well be a ringing declaration by the Congress that it shall be the national policy to preserve the family-type farm as the basic unit of American agriculture, and to promote its welfare...
...A little thought will, I believe, show that is true beyond argument...
...For we all are aware now of the reckless impulse that cut over the forests and plowed up the grasslands, that ignored the basic elements of good farm management in the settlement of new lands...
...Rather, I should like to believe that it is up to us who believe in these things to make eternally clear the choices that are offered the American people...
...Not only must credit facilities be adjusted to enable these farmers to get started and to maintain themselves, but they must be enabled to work together...
...The real points of disagreement come when it is proposed to do something to reverse this trend...
...Moreover, farms of between 500 and 1,000 acres in size increased in number from 125,295 to 163,694...
...The moral, it seems to me, is just as plain as the answer to the question...
...Fairni tenancy percentage marked steadily upward through 1910, 1920, and 1930, reaching a peak of 42.4 per cent of all farmers in the last named year...
...These categories of farms include nearly all of the family-type farms in the country...
...Both were traceable to Government intervention...
...Looking still more closely at the state of agriculture when the United States entered the war, what do we find ? The two most salient trends revealed in the 1940 census of agriculture are apparently in conflict...
...In order for such a program to be fully successful, it should no^ be left solely to the national Government...
...Thus, I do not feel downhearted as we stand at this cross-roads of history...
...From a national standpoint, then, "efficiency" may well be achieved more readily on the family-type farm than on the factory farm...
...But more than that is needed...
...Defeatists have long pointed to the "low costs" of large farms as an argument to show that the family-type farm is doomed...
...I should like to stress, however, that all of these steps, and the other supplementary steps that could be taken, ought to provide for a truly democratic kind of participation by farmers themselves...
...One of these trends is that toward larger and larger units in agriculture...
...The way already has been shown by our experiments of the last decade...
...Then, suddenly, in 1935 the percentage dropped to 42.1...
...Just as, in foreign trade, the United States changed from a debtor to a creditor, so within its own limits the nation changed from expansion to more intensive cultivation of its resources...
...These programs might well follow the model, in some respects, of the Soil Conservation Act, requiring enactment of legislation by the states in order to participate in the benefits of the national program...
...Above all, every farm boy and girl ought to be given the chance to receive an education as good as that received by city children...
...Thus, the last 30 years have shown a steady tendency toward displacement of the farmer who always has been regarded as the backbone of American agriculture and the embodiment of the ideal of Jeffer-sonian democracy...
...In 1910 there was more land included in all the farms of between 100 and 175 acres and in those of 175 to 260 acres than in any other category...
...In 1940, there were 100,531, more than double as many...
...But farms of between 175 and 260 acres, of between 100 and 175 acres, of 50 to 100 acres and so on—all of these declined in number...
...We are aware of the futility of simply opening land to homesteading without regard to capacity of the land itself or to the need of the homesteader for a better chance in an economy pretty well stacked against him...
...It is unnecessary, I think, to cite long tables of statistics to prove further the case made out above...
...These are the really vital foods, if the comprehensive nutritional knowledge of today is to be put to practical use...
...It took the great crash of the late '20s and early '30s to make us face some of the cold factual implications of our changed position...
...And it also seems to me that these figures should dispose of fruitless arguments about bureaucracy and Government meddling and all of the other complaints that imfljy that all Government action is bad...
...A Wisely Adjusted Credit The kind of credit that these family farmers need is not the ordinary kind of commercial credit...
...In 1940 it went down even more, falling off to 38.7 per cent of all farmers...
...Roads ought to be improved and extended throughout rural areas, and a vast public housing program to bring benefits to the country should be inaugurated...
...A healthy, living relationship between the citizen and hi» government is vital to the successful functioning of democracy in an economy as complex as ours and as dependent upon comprehensive action by government...
...But by 1940, the farms ofjmore thorn, 1,000 acres in size included more than double the land included in any of the other main types of farm...
...Challenge To Government Sack are the main outlines of some of the programs that need to be invoked by the Government in order to realign our agriculture, to make it truly an American agriculture of the kind envisaged by Jefferson and the other founders of our democracy...
...a trend toward that most ominous of all monopolies, a monopoly of the land...
...Almost everyone, regardless of his views on what can be done about it, knows that the family-type farm is being pressed harder and harder every year...
...It is that Government is a powerful economic influence that can have decisive effects...
...This cooperative machinery ought to be backed wholeheartedly by Government credit...
...The answer to that is that nobody knows whether large farm units are more efficient than small,, because small units have never been given a fair trial...
...The other trend is a turn downward in the percentage of farm tenancy for the first time in the history of farm statistics...
...If the determination to preserve the family-type farm is reflected throughout, then the details will pretty well take care of themselves...
...Perhaps exploitation would be a better word than cultivation...
...This is pretty clear to most of us now, so far as the world at large is concerned...
...If these figures rntan anything, they mean that the people have a choice between kinds of Government action, and that it is the most potent economic weapon they have...
...Channels for consultation between government and farmer at every level-community, state, and nation—ought to be kept open...
...What they need is wisely adjusted eredit that includes the furnishing of technical adviee and help, and the opportunity for group action through cooperative devices...
...Thus, if we stand at a cross-roads in history, as I think we do, it should be a source of encouragement and optimism to us that we know, surely, that we can use the power of Government to right economic wrongs, to heal economic ills...
...If this.poliey is completely and honestly accepted throughout the various phases of national farm programs, then most of the step-by-step details become crystal clear...
...In the turmoil of the war and in the cushioning of a tremendous home-front prosperity during the war, most of us have been inclined to forget some of the hard inscrutable facts of agricultural economics and history...
...And I think now it will never be possible for Government again to evade responsibility for action as it did during the late '20s and early "AOs...
...It follows then that the agricultural credit structure of the nation would need to be revised to give such farmers first priority...
...Space does not permit a more detailed citing of a completely rounded program...
...Decline Of Farm Tenancy On the other hand, at the same time this grim squeezing of family farms was going on, an apparently contradictory trend occurred...
...State programs supplementing the national are needed...
...If we do our job well, then I have no doubt whatever for the future of America...
...In only one other category was there an increase, that including farms of between 260 and...
...Our measures in the early days of the New Deal were half-measures, Our steps but first stumblings toward a better economic order...
...These acts could well protect both tenant and landlord by spelling out and enforcing model landlord-tenant relationships...
...Factory farms, for instance, take a hidden subsidy out of the hides of their workers by paying them very low wages, about as low as those received by any group...
...500 acres, which rose slight* ly...
...It is probable that the production of the more effective nutritional foods is more adapted to small-farm, intensive methods than to factory methods...
...It has been a truism of economists for many years, since Frederick Jackson Turner propounded the theory, that the frontier is gone...
Vol. 8 • November 1944 • No. 48
