The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1920-02-04
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THE OPINION OF OTHERS.
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UNNECESSARY ALARM.
UNNECESSARY ALARM.

Some 40, 900 farmers of the 100000 to whom the
Post Office Department addressed questionnaire
inviting suggestions about reducing the cost of lv
ing have replied to the appeal, and more answers
are coming in every day. Summarized by the Of
fcias of the department., the chief complaints of
the farmers are that hired help and the farmers
children have been attracted to the city by the
lure of high wages and short hours, so that it is
almost impossible to procure workers for the FARMS
that the middlemen take extortionate profits for
the handling of products; that it is difficult to
establish any relations of contact between the far
mer and the consumer One of the department Of
fcials estimated that many so per cent. of
the farmers replies indicate that the writers
template either leaving their farms or curtailing
acreage under cultivation" Whereupon Assistant
Postmaster General Blakslee makes this comment
"Such condition at time when the predominant
cry is for production and still more production can
not but constitute a grave menace"
The menace revealed by these replies of the
farmers to the departments questions has existed
and would have been disclosed at any time by a
similar process of questioning, for hundred years.
Somehow we have lived through it. The only new
thing in this revelation is the means which the de-
partment has offered of giving extraordinary pub
icity to views which great numbers of farmers thus
approached would at any and all times have ex-
pressed. The farmer has his own psychology. 1t
is known to everybody who knows anything about
farming that the tler of the soil is little given to
complacency and confessed optimism. He may be
doing very well, may be very happy and prosperous,
but if he talks at all about his affairs he is very
apt to say that times are hard the crops are poor
that no help is to be had, that everybody is dis
couraged. Not all farmers talk that way, but we
judge that the department has been extraordinarily
successful in rounding up those who do talk that
way.
There is justice in every one of these complaints
the farmers make. The extravagant and reckless
resort to the "cost plus SYSTEM on Government
contracts during the war has upset wage standards
all over the country. The farmer is not alone in
his difficulties, for in countless industries it is hard
to get labor at reasonable wages 1t is notorious
that the middleman profits unduly at the cost of the
farmer and of the consumer; he always has; and
methods of getting the farm products to the mar
kets, to the consumers, are known to be defective
Nevertheless, the farmers are not going to aban-
don their farms, they not going to reduce pro-
duction The discontented ones are not represen
tative of their class
The farmers of the United States are the very
bone and sinew of good citizenship, of good Ameri
canism; They know that not only is the demand
great but that the need is more pressing than it
ever has been. They know that in such times they
are going to get good prices. The real farmers.
that the vast majority of the farmers practically
all of them have sympathy whatever with
slackers. They believe in the doctrine of produc-
tlon always more production. are willing
to work. And they are not misled by the profess
slona agitators WHO have been industriously striv
ing to misead them into the support of socialistc
and destructive policies.
The heads of the six great farmers organizations
Ill conference in Washington adopted on Friday a
memorial to Congress declaring that "the Govern
ment ownership or continued operation of railroads
is most emphatically opposed."' They condemn
extravaganza in public expenditure they condemn
proflteerng, just as every reasonable man does
There is nothing in the thoughts or condition of the
trainers that CONSTITUTES grave menace" They
are bearing their share, they are willing to bear
their share, of the afterwar burdens. In that they
set a good example to their countrymen Above ALL
they bulwark of protection against the agita-
tors who trying to upset Government and So
cety.-Ncw York Times