The Washington times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1902-1939, 1916-12-01
MAKING THE THING WORK

The Federal Farm Loan Board
shows uncommon evidences Of COM
mon sense. II is finding out at first
hand a vast deal of the truth about
what's the matter with farming. We
have always been glad IL wasn't call
ed an agricultural loan board.
There's too much agriculture and not
enough farming in this country, for
one thing
Everybody has been casting about
for some years to find an explana-
tion Of why so many people persist
in living in town when there is such
a demand for farm products and
prices make II profitable to produce
them. There Is plenty Of land in the
country; why don't people 20 and
farm It?
One reason. the board discovers, Is
that people mostly don't want TO 20
anywhere. They prefer to stay. A
man with eighty acres In Maryland
might sell il and get $40 in wyom-
ing, but he may have prejudices
against moving to Wyoming. Most
Of him have.
Now, it happens there is a great
deal Of perfectly good land in Mary
land. as we'll as in Wyoming. The
Wyoming land has too little mois-
ture, the Maryland land too many
trees. II the trees could be cut of
in some Maryland sections, II drain
age could be afforded in others.
Maryland would be able to offer its
farmers larger opportunities without
sending them across the continent.
The question 10 to get land cleared.
It is a problem Of labor. Of financing,
and Of arousing interest.
Your Marylander with eighty
acres probably has twenty-five Of it
in timber. He Is so busy digging q
living out Of the rest that he doesn't
get the chance to clear this twenty
FIVE. Adjoining him, moreover, is
another eighty acres that he might
buy very cheap and clear-if only he
could get the money and was suffi-
GENTLY interested.
That state Of affairs exists all
over the East and South. Time was
when pioneers cleared land system
atically, as a regular incident. They
don't do II so much nowadays. They
learned. two generations ago. about
the prairies that nature had cleared.
Why pull stumps when by doing SO
they would make the land so costly
II couldn't possibly compete with the
cheap Western land, already clear
ed? So land-clearing fell into eco
nomic disrepute. It didn't pay.
Nowadays things are different. II
will pay to clear the Eastern and
Southern scrub timber tracts. with
corn and wheat and cotton at any
thing like present prices But it re-
quires capital.
SO the Farm Loan Board proposes
to make loans with which TO drain or
clear land. The plan is a sort Of
endless chain. The eighty-acre man
will be allowed to borrow money
enough to clear, say, ten acres. That
ten acres will, by reason Of clearing,
increase from $40 to $50 per acre in
value. The owner will then 90
around to the board, ask a reap
praisement, which will give him
credit for this advance, get a larger
loan in place of the former one, and
clear another ten acres. Then an
other reappraisement, another ex-
pansion Of the loan, and more clear
ing.
It's the most sensible, practicable,
obvious scheme yet devised to get
ting more land into cultivation. and
it is destined to accomplish great
things for farming in this part of
the country. The agricultural East
is going to have a development in
the next two decades that will make
even people from Kansas wonder.