The Wolf Point herald. (Wolf Point, Mont.) 1913-1940, 1921-11-24
COUNTY FARM BUREAU
COMMITTEE REPORTS
Adds Opinion On Agricultural Stu
alton To Congressional
Investigation

This committee represents an in
dustry employing mere workers and
involving an aggceg.".e investment
far greater then in any other indus
try. This industry provides more
than half of Inc raw materials used
in manufactures. furnishes approXi-
mately so per cent of the gross
freight revenue of the railroads, and
makes a consumers market Tor 40
per cent Of all manufactured goods.
It is plain that an industry of 49,
O00,O 600 workers out of a total of
100000 900 in all industries, an in
dustry furnishing 40 per cen of the
consuming power of the Nation, a
basic industry on which all industries
and workers depend for food and
the raw materials of clothing and
many Of the other necessities of liv-
ing, has a powerful and ~all-pervad-
ing influence on unemployment. Ev-
cry manufacturing, transportation,
commercial and financial enterprise
and every home in the land is vital
ly interested in the prosperity Of
agriculture.
There is no acute problem of I'M
employment in the agricultural in
dustry. On the contrary, this indus
try is absorbing or at least providing
a haven for great numbers of unem-
ployed from the industrial %centers.
In the face of the falling prices and
vanishing profits farmers have main
tanned their production of food and
other raw materials even when they
had no assurance or reasonable hope
of receiving for their products a
price equal to their production costs.
In instances they have done this on
mere subsistence wages. Cotton
farmers, for example, have willingly
accepted from banks advances of $40
per month with which to pay their la
borers with nothing advanced for the
living of their own families. Thanks
to this willing and often Improbable
activity on the part of the farmers,
the Nation now has an abundance of
food products and raw materials for
clothing.
The farmers difficulty and the
cause of much of the industrial dis
tress and unemployment in the cities
grow out of the fact that the prices
received by farmers enables them to
buy about half as many manufac-
tured products at the prices asked as
they purchased in normal time.
The purchasing power of the farm
er has been so greatly reduced that
he is not buying his usual supplies.
He can not. In the case of farm m
plements the purchasers have been
reduced to one-third of the amount
bought in previous years. Many
farmers have lost their savings of a
life time.
The farm population constitutes
40 per cent of the total of the Ma
ton. When farmers do not buy, the
business of small towns stagnated,
manufacturing plants restrict oper-
ations, or close, as many of them
have been forced to do. The larger
cities and transportation suffer ac-
cordingly.
The farmer can not continue to
exist on the present basis. His share
is too low or others are receiving too
much. A lessened agricultural in
come has slowed down all lines.
Of business. General prosperity can
not return until agriculture, by far
our greatest productive industry, re
sumes normal conditions. In the IN
terest Of the great labor-employing
industries of the country every
thing possible should be done to
of exchange of products with other
place agriculture on a proper raJio
industries.