The Washington herald., 1920-05-26
URGES
BIGGER CROPS
Warns of Food Shortage
Unless Waning Produc-
ton Is Checked.
CONTINUED FROM PAGE ONE.


structive policy Of agricultural re-
adjustment. We have had official
commissions and committees en-
deavoring to formulate policies on
Industrial readjustment, but to date
no such commission has been as
sembled for the farmers. Such a
commission, composed of highly
trained farmers from the farm, with
special experts on economics and
finance, should be summoned to con-
slider the causes and remedies for
this situation.
There will sooner or later be a
fall in the prices of commodities.
for the present high levels are due
to imitation. to the misuse of the
resulting extended credits for spec
ulation and profiteering and mons
essential production, to shortage in
production outside of the United
States and consequent drainage of
our supplies, to wild extravaganza
and other causes which at some
period will diminish or collapse.
When this defation and consequent
fall in prices arrives, no matter how
carefully handled, it will be found
that then the intermediate dealers
will be able to pass the greatest
portion. to the back of the farmer;
constructive measures are therefore
vital to minimize the charges lying
between farmer and consumer. De-
f1ation must not begin on the
farmer
~If such commission were
formed, it would find amongst other
things of peculiar interest to the
farmer:
Fixed by Competition.
That the farmers prices are
fixed by competition with world
wholesale prices at the points
where the world streams of food
meet; that such prices bear only a
remote relation to the farmers
costs of production, and that con-
sequently any increase in the cost
of placing the farmers products on
sale at these places where. com
petition meets is a deduction 49,
the farmers own receipts;
That the continued initiation of
credits since the armistice has eX-
tended speculation and profteering
by expanding the borrowing faciIi-
ties to any food distributor who
wanted to indulge in such practices
Gnstead of devotion of credit to
legitimate production and distri-
bution) has widened the margin
between the farmer and his market,
and has likewise increased the
prices of the supplies that the
farmer must buy as well;
That the burden of taxation is
wrongly distributed; that the excess
profits tax, as il works out, is an
appointment to food manufacturers
and distributors to collect taxes for
the government by adding them to
the margin between the farmer and
the market.
That the war deterioration in our
transportation facilities has created
periodic structures in the free flow
of food from the farm to the con-
sumner; has compelled the farmer to
sell his product during a local glut
and has compelled the consumer to
buy during a local shortage-again
an Increase in the margin.
Marketing System Obsolete.
That there are many imPediments
to free marketing that give special
privileges or increase the risks in
distribution and compensation, and
that every impediment and every
Iisk is Inevitably added to the mar
gin between farmer and consumer:
That the whole marketing sys-
tenn in many CT our commodities is
indirect. expensive, wasteful, obso-
lete, and increase the margins un-
duly;
That our manufacturing indus
tries have developed out Of pace
with our agriculture, and that our
labor is being drawn in thousands
from the farm to the town. at wages
our farmers cannot contend with.
That there is an appalling in.
crease in tenant farming, due at
least in some degree to the wild
speculation in land through inla-
tion and expansion of credit faciIi-
ties;
That the organization of con-
solidated buying of American prod
uce by European governments, and
the consequent domination of our
prices. is a menace to the American
farmer.
Such commission would seek
the remedy for these things with
that same common sense with