St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1910-07-23
FOR GOOD ROADS.
An Excellent Article On
|. Good Roads from the
National Grange Of
fetal Organ.
Showing How Farmers are
Benefited in Earning
Capacity and Value
OF Property.
Good Roads a Necessity to
Users of Motor Ma
chimes for Farms
and Travel.
A Complete Treatise that
Covers Every Phase Of
a Much-DiScuSScd
Subject.

This article deals from the view
point of the farmer with what after
al Is farmers questionable pres
ent high cost of food. 1t gives the
farmers ideas about the cause and
cure of the evil, described by Mr..
James ]. Hill as: IAN enlarged city
life and a neglected country life, o
crowded artisan population clamor-
ing for food, and a foreign demand
for the product Of their wages lin
tied to fields where the competition
of the world must be met and over
come" While the newspapers and
magazines have lately been full of
rem edies for existing conditions, they
have been mainly put forward in the
interests Of the cities. The side of
the question which seems to have
been neglected is how the whole mat
ter affects the man who is being
asked on all sides to come to the res
cue, the man who lives on the soil
and raises the nations food supply,
the farmer himself.
The first fact which should be
brought out Is that it is not the farm
er who is responsible for the present
high cost Of living, and that it is not
he who is principally benefitting by
the present high price OF wheat, beef.
mutton, pork, corn, or milk 1t is
true that he is receiving more for his
produce than he did twenty years
ago, but the increased reward Of
farming is only in line with he gen.
eral increase in values all over the
world. 1t must be remem bered that
- f1r 1oh nd n
price of practically everything that
the farmer buys, have increased in
the same proportion.
Take the typical case of wheat.
The retail price of -four in 1898 was
$3.50 per barrel. The retail price of
flour to-day is at the rate of $500
per barrel. Of the difference be-
tween former and present values the
farmer gets about $1.00. The re-
naming $3.50 represents a change
in the conditions Of distribution. 1t
| means city prices as compared with
country prices, and includes the spec
| ulatiye profits of the middlemaD.
! The divorce between the food pro-
| ducer and the food consumer, due to
| the overcrowding of the cities and
| the relative depopulation of the coun-
| try districts, has placed the control
of the country's food supply in the
| hands of a class who are spectators
| first and distributors afterwards. 1t
is in the fact that the population ia
becoming more remote from the
sources of food supply rather than in
the fact that food production is more
| costly than formerly, that the real
reason of the present high cost OF
! living must be sought.
In 1904 only four per cent of the
population of the United States lived
in cities. At the present time the
percentage is over forty. q. One inter
probation of these fgures-the one
| insisted on by Mr.. Hills that
| whereas in 1900 there were SO culti-
vators to support non-cultivators
at present not over 80 in every 100
are, in the agricultural sense, pro-
ducers. But it should be remem-
| bered that the general employment
| by the modern farmer Of agricultural
| machinery which makes the modern
| farm hand at least six times as eff
| cient as his predecessor, prevents his
| relatively decreased numbers from
| having much effect on prices. What
| is important in the above figures in
| relation to the cost of living is that
every increase in the urban popula-
ton, and every decrease in the coun-
| try population tends to put both pro-
| ducer and consumer more and more
! at the mercy Of the middleman. An
| individual farmer has about as much
chance under present conditions OF
| determining what he shall receive
| for his milk, vegetables or corn, as
| the consumer has of determining
| what he shall pay for these products
| The only remedy from the viewpoint
| OF both the consumer and farmer, is
such cooperation among the farmers
as will enable them to deal on equal
| terms with the distributors. (See
| report of Country Life Commission
| appointed by President Roosevelt
which found that the principal and
| most pressing need Of the rural dis
tricts was effective cooperation be-
tween farmers to put them on level
with the organized interests with
which they do business And this
again is question of convenient ac-
cess between both farmer and farmer
and between farmer and consumer.
Translated into practice, access
means roads. AS We proceed we shall
| see that 1t means roads plus some
thing more, but good roads at least
| are necessary. For the present le:
| us see how far SVSta am of highways