The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1924-03-01

ent difficulties of farmers by tenn
porary changes in relations of agri-
culture to industry-( disproportion
in existing prices in favor Of indus
trial products against farm products
in comparison with the so-called pre-
war prices)-by cheating" of farm
ers in the sphere of transportation
and distribution (high tariffs and
increased distances between the
prices that farmers receive and what
consumers pay for farm products)
and by changes in overseas mar
kets- decrease of purchasing power
of the old foreign customers Of u. S.
agricultural products of other coun-
tries)-are based without question
on very real facts.
Listening to these explanations
the farmers can recognize that they
are exploited in many ways. If they
will consider those means of exploit
tation closer, they may be able to
discover that many of them are fng-
ers of the one handicapped
are snatching the produced values
for its greedy stomach.
explanations lnSunIclent.
But these explanations are not
sufficient even when carried thru to
the very root of the evil. 1t is very
easy to see that they all try to find
the causes of farmers. difficulties
outside of the sphere of production
not in agriculture itself. They are
very far from the main point: from
the most important changes in agri-
cultural relations on the fields, from
the place where free American farm
ers are transformed into dependent
peasants, where the system of agri-
culture, as it was established during
the colonization period, is smashed
now in pieces and an entirely differ
ent system of agriculture is intro
duced in its place.
These changes are equal in import
ance to the appropriation of peasants
lands in connection with the abolition
of serfdom in Russia in 1861 and in
other European countries before that
time, or the appropriation of common
lands in England from about the last
quarter of the fifteenth century to
nearly the end of the sixteenth cen
fury.
Difference in Substance.
But the present changes are here
essentially different in substance.
The agricultural relations of United
States with a dominating owning
system were different not only from
the old relations but even from the
results of the GLORIOUS" revolutions
in agricultural systems in Europe.
In Europe the medieval relations in
agriculture we're changed only so
far as to open the way for develop
ment of capitalistic relations in
agriculture. In United States, on the
contrary, the farmers system was
a creation of capitalistic colonization.
1t could not have and did not have
any obstacles in the way for devel-
opment of capitalism but was in all
the world the clearest expression of
capitalistic agriculture in the period
of colonization with abundant free
lands suitable for cultivation and
where the expansion of private land
ownership ahead of expansion of its
cultivation found sometimes very
strong opposition and was restricted.
The farmer system Il have called it
this to distinguish it from the ten
ant system of Europe), as establish
ed in colonial times in a period when
capitalism was represented by many
competing groups of manufacturers
and traders, essentially differed from
all other agricultural systems by the
facts that this system did not know
any separate class of landowners
pomeshchiks, juhkers, pans, barons,
lords-that under this system the de-
velopment of land rent was limited
and the land was practically insepa-
rable from farmers income or prof
its, and that the actual farmers own
ed the land which they cultivated.
Various Forces at Work.
The forces which contributed to
the establishment of such system
were many. There was a time when
in tho NAV of divisional oora;cfe