Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1924-10-20
The Farm Problem

The hard situation in which
the farmers of the South have
been placed during the past ;
years has caused a shifting in
the foundations of our national
life which ought to concern, not
farmers alone or even mainly,
but all people If every occupa-
ton who are interested in pre-
serving American government
and American life as they have
always existed. The farm prob
lem. essentially, is not a class
problem but national prob
lem. Unless the right solution
is found, business and industry
and the domestic and laboring
conditions of the cities will suf-
fer, in the end, very much more
than the farmers do. For the
fountain from which the cities
suck their sustenance is being
dried up.
The best estimates obtainable
show that about 100000
farmers in the United States
have been driven out of bust
ness since 1920. Some of them
continue on the farms as ten
ants or economic slaves to
mortgage holders; the others
have become day laborers in
the cities. There are many farm
ing communities scattered
throughout the United States
where hardly single family is
left that lived on the land four
years ago.
Few persons in the cities I'M
derstand what the breaking up
Of farm home means. The
farm is not merely a place to
live-it is the source of a life.
The bankrupt farmers is a man
destroyed. The day when he
could move on to free or even
cheap land is past. Nothing is
left for him except to become
tenant to an absentee landlord,
giving up the bulk of his earn
fngs to pay his rent, or go as a
iaborer in a line of work that he
does not understand. There are
other names for unrequieted toll
slavery, serfdom and the like
ugly names, all.
The energetic families, par
ticularly those having boys and
girls of energetic outlook, leave
the-farms for the hope of bet
ter things in town. The unre-
souYceful, the indolent, the stu
pid--these remain as slaves on
the farms they once may have
owned. The bond and sinew
of rural life is eaten away. Those
who would have stayed to breed
good farmers of the future, to
build up schools and churches
and to keep their shoulders to
the wheel of progress are gone.
And the nation begins to pay
the price of folly.
There is nothing new in all
this. 1t is as old as Egypt, old
as the cities of the Mesopo-
tamian plains. 1t has been re-
peated in every civilization that
ever died. AS one writer puts
it:
Destruction comes from the
rushing of the dispossessed and
the unrequieted to the cities. The
farmers suffer first, then the
small towns go down, then the
larger cities decay, and the over
swollen centers of population, de-
prived of nourishment and with
lost markets, fall into the hands
of mobocracy of impoverished
and idle people, and the state
passes away into something else"
That is the process which has
been going on in the United
States-is going on now. No
American should deceive him
self as to that. There ere only
about 100000 farms in the
United States, and 100000 of
the farm families have been
rooted out of the soil. The ma
ton cannot stand up forever I'M
der this drain upon the life
blood of nation life.
If any one is lulled by repre-
sensations that the farmers are
receiving good prices this year,
let him reflect, remembering
that Sumter farmers-many of
them sold their cotton at 20
cents, when the most intelligent
farmers claim that it cannot be
produced for less than Is cents.
Others estimate the cost even
higher.
Insurance must be written
against the recurrence of agri-