Newark leader. ([Newark, Ohio]) 1917-1946, 1923-12-28
UP AGAINST 1T
MANY FARMERS DRIVEN INTO
BANKRUPTCY
Secretary of Agriculture Says Situa-
tions Is Menace to Future Food
Supply of the Nation
(By Federated Press)

A quarter of the farm owners in Is
grain producing states have been
driven into bankruptcy since 1920.
More than one-third of these have
already lost their farms. The per-
centage of tenant farmers who lost
their farms is even higher. Farm
bankruptcy cases have jumped from
per cent of the total number in pre-
war years to IA per cent of the total
in 1922 as enumerated in the annual
report of the secretary of agriculture.
Outlining the financial disaster
which overlook the farm owners be-
tween 1920 and the present the re-
port shows that over A per cent lost
their farms through foreclosure or
bankruptcy and that nearly As per
cent surrendered their farms to cred
itors without legal process making a
total of about 81a per cent who lost
their farms with or without legal pro-
ceedings. In addition, says the re-
port, more than Is per cent were in
fact bankrupt but were holding on
through leniency of their creditors.
the department include the socalled
east north central states of Ohio, In
diana, Illinois, Michigan and Wiscon-
sin, the west north central group of
Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North Da-
kota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and
Kansas, and three montain states,
probably Montana, Idaho, and Wyo-
ming. .a,7..e
"The records of the department of
justice" says the report, indicate
that in prewar years 5 per cent of all
bankruptcy cases were farmers, but
in 1922 it has grown to IA per cent. In
some states where in pre- war years
the farmers bankruptcy cases rep
resented about per cent of all such
cases this percentage in 1922 had ris-
en- to nearly 80 per cent"
These heavy losses, the secretary
says, have not been due to ineffi-
cheney on the part of the farmers.
Practically all were incurred by men
who had been doing fairly we'll until
they entered the period of drastic de-
flation. The fundamental difficulty
is that the farmer is being forced to
meet his individual and public debts
with dollars which represent far more
labor than those which he borrowed:
Economic justice would require that
the price level during the years when
the debtor is paying individual and
public debts should be as high as
when these debts were incurred, thus
making it possible for him to meet
his fixed payments of taxes, interest
and principal with about the quantity
of labor or the products of labor re.
quired to meet them at the time the
debts were incurred. This is not the
case now with the farmer"
Property taxes and interest COM
bined paid by agriculture in 1922
reached the enormous total of $1,749,-
100000, according to the report which
estimates that while in 1920 the Who'll,
property taxes and interest charges
were large enough to absorb the en-
tire value of the wheat and tobacco
crops, in 1922 the value of wheat,
oats and tobacco crops and half of the
potato crop was necessary to pay tax
es and interest. Property taxes paid
| by agriculture in 1914 absorbed an
amount equivalent to less than two
fifths of the value of the 1914 wheat
crop. In 1922 these same taxes call
ed for practically the entire value of
the wheat crop.
The result is reflected in the steady
drift from the farms to the towns.
Estimates by the department indi-
cate that the net change in population
from the farm to the town in 1922
was around 100000. The number
of habitable farm houses vacant rose
from At per cent of the total in 1920
to 7.3 per cent in 1922.
This situation, according to the sec
retary of agriculture, constitutes a
menace to the future food supply of
the nation.