The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-08-19
MIR. DAVIS ON FARM RELIEF

ing tneatrouDteS or the farmer that some city dwellers may get the impression that thea farmer is a sort of helpless in- dividualt who requires the assiduous at tention of politicians in order to keep from perishing, That, of course, is wide of the truth. The farmer is the most independent of producers. No other pro- ducer can go through year after year of crop failure or market depression and survive. Blythe very nature of his sit uation the farmer can find subsistence and carry on in spite of multiplying ad- versailles. I'd be sure, many farmers get tired of living on the edge of things and transport themselves to some populous center where they may be sure of a steady income. But in the main, the chief problem of the farmer is not in find ing enough to live on, but in discovering some means of stabilizing his business; for, while he may be in the financial depths today, tomorrow he may be riding a high crest of temporary prosperity. Perhaps it is the very uncertainty of the gamble that keeps many g farmer plug ging away, with the vision of bumper crop and high prices always and ever before his eyes.
 The trouble with most of the legisla- tion designed to help the farmer is that it tends to make it easier for him to get into debt, but provides no means for helping him out of debt. The farmer doesn't need any more facile means of mourning obligations. He has had enough of that. What the farmer needs is to organize his affairs on such a basis that the price he receives for his product shall always be greater than it's cost to produce. He needs some system of con- trolling the marketing of crops, so that there will be no price slump due to dump ing from which the farmer shall suffer, followed later on in the year by price rise in which not the farmer, but the middleman shall participate. There has always been money in farm products, but. the trouble is that the most of the profit has gone to others and not to the farmer. The price the consumer pays at resail for farm products has always been high enough to allow a good profit for all through whose hands the goods passes, but the farmer has been straLegically at a disadvantage, and has not received his due share. It has gone to the speculator or to some one equipped to finance and store the surplus.
 It is therefore with peculiar satisfac- tion that one turns to the measures of relief proposed by MT. John w. Davis. Here is no demagogue seeking to sell the gilded legislative bricks that were the stock-in-trade of the last congress. Here is man who has, discerned the funda- mental causes of the farmers periodic distress and seeks to right those causes in order that the distress may automatic ally become thing of the past. Mr. Davis proposes a more flexible adjust ment of freight rates to farm emergen- cies. He calls upon the Interstate Com merce Commission to be more diligent in discovering rate burdens and more prompt in relieving them, even if such an innovation as seasonal rate schedules be resorted to. Why not excursion rates for crops as well>as for tourists?
 But MT. Davis strikes the keynote of the situation when he expresses his de- termination.to emphasize the good sense of applying the measures already avail able and on the statute books for ad-- vancing the interests of agriculture. There are already ways enough in which the government may help the farmer out, without proceeding to new enactments. MT. Davis would also encourage in every manner the more complete organization of farmers for handling their business more systematically, more economically, more independently of non-producing manipulators and more profitably. When the farmer stabilizes his methods, stand ardizes his grades and modulates his mar ket offerings to the market demands, he will have contributed a stability to val ues as consistent and well-proportioned as that existing between the cost and the selling-price of manufactured articles. Why shouldn't the farmer set his own price to the same degree that every other producing industry sets its own price? And why shouldn't the farmer protect his customers and the public against gambling in his product, just the same as manufacturers of other goods protect their trademarks against price manipula- tions?
 It is believed that MT. Davis is the first man in national politics in a long time to sound really intelligent note in regard to the problems of American ag- riculture. Many others have perceived that something was wrong, but they have made the mistake of suggesting the rem edy before making a diagnosis.
 EVEN RADICALS NEED MONEY