WHY FARMERS ARE LIKE THAT
Waring, P. Alston & Teller, Walter Magnes
Why Farmers Are Like That By WALTER MAGNES TELLER & P. ALSTON WARING EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first of a series of 2 articles. WHEN the 1944 election was over it was apparent that farmers had...
...Most of these immigrants were Catholic...
...Common origin and common religious outlook, when thought of in the broad rather than the sectarian sense, have served as a bond for American farmers...
...Recently we met with a group of farmers to discuss the soil conservation law in our state...
...They are really more at home in an older cultural pattern...
...This whole question of why farmers behave as they do, and not...
...At the same time the number of farmers is constantly diminishing, whereas only 70 years ago farmers constituted over half of the population of the nation...
...Most of these people were Protestants...
...Prosperity among farmers has dissipated most of the New Deal mood and enough time has passed for many to forget the Holiday Association and stubborn Milo Reno...
...Today the national environment is urban and farmers, although they use tractors, which are a product of modern industrial urban life, do not think in terms of the problems of that life...
...It doesn't make sense...
...and when George Peterson in the northern part of our county says in his farm club meeting, "It hurts me from the bottom of my heart to take this milk subsidy," then we ask ourselves why farmers are like that...
...We believe this very fact contributes to the conservatism which exists among farmers...
...They did so in spite of the fact that the agricultural program of the last decade has brought a high degree of improvement and increasing prosperity to a great many farmers...
...For the whole of Colonial life and for more than half of our history since the American revolution we have been an agrarian nation...
...Farmers are not as a group young people...
...Most farmers had an extreme contempt for WPA workers during the depression of the last decade because their experience has made them feel that work solves all problems and they have no understanding of mass unemployment in modern society...
...Behind the apparent differentiations and diversity of American farm life there is a common ground created by the past...
...The bulk of the people who became American farmers were well prepared for life in a frontier, agrarian society, unhampered by tradition and caste and were', to some extent, distrustful of those who came later to help develop our industrial cities...
...A man reaches an age when he becomes content...
...Though they are large farmers and small farmers, secure farmers and poor farmers, individual owners and workers on large plantations or factory farms, nevertheless they tend to cling to certain attitudes, certain fears, and certain beliefs...
...Qualities In Common American farmers have not always been conservative...
...Who are the American farmers...
...The defeat of the farmers' political movement in the 1890's was the last fling of our early agrarian society against the dominant industrialism...
...American farmers, although they differ widely in the kind of farming they do, which is determined by both soil and climate, have certain characteristics in common...
...Moreover, it was in northwestern Europe that individualism had been growing in the 17th and 18th Centuries, and Protestantism was not only an expression of that radical individualism but afforded religious and philosophic justification for it...
...Or does it...
...They all seem to be middle-aged men...
...It looks to us as though there is a lag in the agricultural segment of our society...
...When the average American thinks of a farmer he thinks of him as being conservative, individualistic, and provincial...
...WHEN the 1944 election was over it was apparent that farmers had once again voted contrary to their own best interests...
...And if it is true, will these traits help farmers and the nation in meeting the problems of postwar adjustment...
...Moreover, the average age of farmers today is 48— astonishingly high...
...Subsequent immigrations from east and south Europe and Ireland went into the cities...
...Who Are The Farmers...
...However, as farmers have become increasingly confronted by expedients and institutions that have developed within urban society to meet situations which are primarily urban and industrial, they are not only confused but likely to have a hostile reaction...
...Some good explanation of why they behave as they do is possible, and moreover it seems to us that this is important because farming does not belong to another kind of economic society from that of the rest of the country...
...The farmer is apt to try to solve the complicated crises of today in terms of the simpler methods of an agrarian society and this is one reason why farmers are largely conservative...
...These are unfamiliar things to them and their reaction, based on their rural experience, is, in terms of modern needs, a conservative one...
...When a neighbor says that he despises unions, when a New Jersey farmer makes it perfectly clear that he resents the success of his fellow-farmer who has done well with potatoes in Maine, and when a farmer says he is for conservation but against any law to make eon-eervation work...
...When the frontier vanished agrarian radicalism went with it...
...Except, in the South, many rural communities voted against the Roosevelt Administration...
...The early agrarian radicalism which developed in the dangers, hardships, and free land of the frontier and which made a large contribution toward the achievement of universal suffrage and free education, no longer exists in our rural communities...
...Unquestionably patterns of behavior and social attitudes, which arose from the fact that most people were farmers, became fixed and have carried over into our present industrial era...
...The trend since 1920 has shown a steady increase in their average age and the 1940 census figure of 48 has almost certainly increased during the war...
...Today only 20 per cent of Americans are farm people, and the productivity of each farmer is swiftly growing in our technological society...
...We were speaking of the problem of making effective this new movement for erosion control and Mark Frye from Clarion County said, "It's hard to get the idea across to most of my neighbors...
...Farming is very much a part of our capitalist economy and the conflicts and struggles which affect the ration also affect farmers whether or not they know it or like it...
...In our own county which is an area of general and dairy farming the level of farm security was high even before the war...
...What are the facts of history which have made them what they are...
...The behavior of farmers is not necessarily paradoxical...
...The first American farmers were of British and North European origin and by and large the later immigrants who settled on the land were of the same Block...
...To what extent is this a true characterization...
...in their political reactions only, is perplexing...
...When you plow a field with a rubber-tired tractor and gang plows, you are still plowing and preparing a seed bed for grain much as farmers have done throughout the centuries and you are acting in accordance with experience with which all farmers are familiar and you are not disturbed...
...Yet our community gave the Republican ticket a larger plurality than it did 4 years ago...
Vol. 9 • May 1945 • No. 21
