WHAT PRICE FARMER-LABOR UNITY?
Fountain, Clayton W.
What Price Farmer-Labor Unity? By CLAYTON W. FOUNTAIN "NEITHER you nor we can make good on a pledge to produce for abundance if the other is not working to that pattern also," said Jim Carey,...
...The general price level would go down to 87 cents on the 1926 dollar . . . National income would be about $105 billion...
...In agriculture, a comparable record has been achieved...
...From the same source, we find that improved farming techniques have raised average crop yields per acre 20 per cent over the period of 1923-32...
...29, 1944...
...But if only 50% million of those 55% million workers get jobs, then we'd be having what would probably be called a 'recession.' Where would agriculture be then...
...It marks an improvement in farmer-labor relations which has been progressing quietly for the past two years...
...The Research Department of the UAW-CIO submits the following picture of what might happen to labor after the war: -v "If, in the postwar period, overtime pay would decline to 1939 levels, the total of wages and salaries would fall to $38,770,000,000 for all manufacturing and to $2,053,000,000 for the automotive industry...
...The Department of Commerce reports that industrial labor boosted its per man productive capacity 34 per cent from 1929 to 1941, and predicts another 50 per cent increase' by 1950...
...There is no other road to the goal of democratic abundance...
...1, 1944, issue of his publication...
...Bowen expresses clearly the pattern of economic arrangements under which democracy and freedom have the best chance of flourishing in a modern industrial society...
...farm prices 19 per cent above parity...
...This is more evident today than ever before...
...But the significant trend in farmer-labor relations is the new willingness of Farm Bureau leaders to meet with union folks in discussions of common problems...
...In that case, if you added up farming income of all people on farms, it would be only about $3.5 billion . . . which is not much more than it was in 1932 . . . The farmer's parity dollar would be worth only 62 cents...
...Markets for the fruits of the fields will zoom downward...
...for the reorganization of world trade in peacetime products -is bound to be a slow and cumbersome process...
...The consequences of these drastic reductions in purchasing power will be swiftly transmitted to the agricultural population...
...It can and should be done everywhere in America...
...Let's get busy and weld a mighty force for democratic progress, by joining the calloused hands of the workers and farmers...
...Half a million more people would go back to farms to compete there for a living...
...In place of state ownership, we offer the mixed "free economy" as denned by Mr...
...The Need For Joint Action The National Farmers Union, of course, has cooperated with organized labor for several years on the political and legislative front...
...We have cried in the wilderness for years that the American worker and the American farmer face common problems and that they ought to work toward «om-mon goals...
...This would amount to a 5 per cent decline for all manufacturing and a 7 per cent decline for auto...
...Farm prices would average about parity...
...For, if production of industrial and agricultural products falls sharply after the date of peace—and if employment drops from 5 to 10 million people-—the consequences will be equally disastrous for farmers and city workers...
...We have the tools at hand with which to construct such a mixed economy of freedom and abundance...
...Total manufacturing wages would slump from a wartime peak of $40,796,000,000 to $24,000,000,000...
...And the fate of democratic freedom is at stake...
...Finally, we tell the farmer frankly that we are not demanding his support for a labor program, but that we are inviting him to join with us in working out a progressive economic program that will advance the welfare of all Americans who labor to a useful social purpose...
...Then we assure the farmer that we of labor believe in the family-type, owner-operated farm as the basis of American agriculture...
...If the 'recession' became a real depression of the 1932 kind, say 15 million people unwillingly jobless, the general price level would be down to about 66 cents on the 1926 dollar . . . National income would be about '$57.5 billion...
...Then, because the old political parties stand in our way, we can beget a new people's party, like the Canadian CCF, that will take us to a new postwar America of freedom and abundance...
...The farmer's parity dollar would be worth 92.5 cents...
...The "free economy" described above by Mr...
...The Bureau of Agricultural Economics cites statistics to show that the average person working on the land in 1044 turned out one-third more farm products than in 1939, and twice as much as in 1910...
...We are faced, then, in factories and on the farms, with economic perils so grave that they may well result in political upheavals disastrous enough to destroy American democracy...
...By what roads, and toward which goals, shall we move to avert the sufferings and hardships which threaten us in the postwar period...
...It is obvious from the foregoing figures that a sharp postwar decline' in productivity and employment will plunge millions of farm families into economic disaster...
...The question of the hour is: What are we going to do about it...
...The co-ops need capital to expand their ownership of productive facilities which compete with private enterprise...
...Grim Farm Outlook This threat of a postwar decline in productivity was clearly presented by Porter Hedge, Editor of Spade, in the Nov...
...we have built them during the war...
...Hedge wrote as follows: "With prices like 1943's, and 55y2 million people working, national income would be about $150 billion...
...And the future looks equally dark for industrial labor...
...They are the tools of plenty...
...They share a joint danger, too...
...E. R. Bowen, General Secretary of the Cooperative League of the U. S. A., denned such an economic goal Dec...
...but it projects a degree of democratic collectivism, in the forms of cooperatives and public ownership, sufficient to prevent monopoly capitalism from easing America into a native fascism cloaked in the garments of "free enterprise and Americanism...
...One concrete step in this direction might be the loaning of funds from trade union reserves, on a sound investment basis, to farm cooperatives...
...By CLAYTON W. FOUNTAIN "NEITHER you nor we can make good on a pledge to produce for abundance if the other is not working to that pattern also," said Jim Carey, Secretary-Treasurer of the CIO, in a speech to the Kansas Farm Bureau, meeting in Topeka Nov...
...This requires abandonment of the outworn Marxist doctrine of state ownership of all productive facilities...
...Fate Of Democracy At Stake Acceptance of these goals will, of course, require a basic reorientation of the old theories which the labor movement has long rfeld with respect*to the problem of farmer-labor unity...
...For comparison, the same figures for 1943 went like this: Cash income from farm marketings, $19.2 billion ; net farming income of all persons on farms, $13.1 billion...
...Economically, the impact of two world wars, with a depression sandwiched between them, on the lives of American workers and farmers has sharply intensified their mutual need for joint action...
...Bowen...
...The appearance of Carey at the Kansas Farm Bureau meeting is something for progressives to cheer about...
...21, at the Centennial Anniversary of the Co-op Movement, when he said: "A true 'free economy' means neither state-owned, state-controlled, or state-regulated monopoly, but an economy controlled from within, not from without, an economy where cooperative ownership and public ownership act as yardsticks for private ownership, in short a mixed economy where the people determine freely which of the three forms of ownership is best suited for every field of enterprise in order to serve themselves best...
...On the basis of these points, progressive labor and farm leaders ought to work hard to set up joint discussion groups all across the country at the grass-roots level...
...In the Spring of 1943, Murray D. Lincoln, dynamic leader of the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation, who is also head of the Cooperative League of the U. S. A., made a speech in Detroit that won the hearts of a conference of delegates from all Michigan UAW-CIO local unions...
...Labor and farm organizations ought to answer this question with an emphatic NO ! We ought to assert our determination to maintain public and independent control of the productive tools now owned by the people, and fight furiously to have these tools of plenty transferred to management by public corporations, cooperatives, and independent enterprise divorced from monopoly...
...In the third place, if the return to peace-time production means that the same percentage of workers will be in the various industries after the war as in 1939— that is, if the percentage of workers in auto, steel, rubber, textile, electrical machinery, etc., will be the same after as before the war—then there would be still another cut of 21 per cent in manufacturing wages and 7 per cent in auto wages...
...Lincoln's earthy tales of the struggles of his Ohio farmers for a higher standard of living were repeated later in the year to the national convention of the UAW-CIO at Buffalo, New York...
...Shall we permit these tools of plenty to revert to the control of the monopolists whose world-wide adherence to an economic philosophy of scarcity was largely responsible for the outbreak of this war...
...As Jim Carey put it in his Topeka speech to the Kansas Farm Bureau, "here we are, both of us, farmers and city workers, standing convicted of an ability to produce like we never knew we could produce...
...The time has come for labor and farm organizations to declare themselves—to make known what types of economic organizations they think will best serve to speed America quickly and peacefully to a society of abundance and freedom...
...When we lose our jobs, you lose your farms," Reuther told the delegates as he stressed the need for "freedom from fear of abundance...
...First of all, we must decide within the labor movement that we are not aiming at establishment of a "labor government" for the purpose of socializing all private property...
...and we prove to him, by action, that we want to see him enjoy the high standard of living to which all Americans are entitled...
...In July, 1944, Walter P. Reuther, Vice President of the UAW-CIO, delivered a ringing address to the annual midwest conference of the American Farm Bureau Federation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin...
...Furthermore, if the average number of hours worked in the postwar period would fall off to the number worked in 1939, wage and salary payments would drop another 15 per cent for all manufacturing industries and an-additional 23 per cent for the automotive industry...
...Nor will the experts to foreign countries for rehabilitation be sufficient to take up the slack...
...This is already being done in South Bend, Ind., and in Grand Rapids, Mich...
...It shuns the pitfalls of state socialism and totalitarian communism, both of which are poison to democracy and freedom...
...When all of this is applied to agriculture, it means that cash income from farm marketings would be about $16% billion, and the farming income of all the people on farms would total $10.2 billion...
...The time has come for organized labor and organized farmers to realize their joint responsibility to use their organizational power in behalf of a serious, intelligent crusade for full employment and full production in the postwar period...
...While the ordinary farmer and the ordinary union member in basic industries may not realize it, the hope for an America of abundance and freedom lies largely in their calloused hands...
Vol. 9 • January 1945 • No. 5
