The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-05-26


creasing. In 1880 tenant farmers
were 25,6 per cent of all farmers; in
1925 they were already 1856 per cent.
Farmers are forced into bankruptcy
by hundreds Of thousands. In the
Middle West between 1920 and 1928
no less than 22.5 per cent of all farm
owners and 35 per cent of all tenants
lost their farms by bankruptcy, by
foreclosure, or retained them only
as the government expresses it-by
"the leniency" of their creditors.
At least 40 per cent of the whole
agricultural population, AZ million
people, are neither owners nor tenant
farmers but simply agricultural work
ers, who own nothing but their labor
power. The agricultural workers have
the lowest standard of living, are
forced to work the longest working
day and under the worst conditions in
the whole country. Their wages are
actually decreasing. The introduction
of new machinery is replacing them
by tens of thousands. They are I'M
organized, isolated, and completely at
the mercy of their employers and the
state power.
The working farmers are in the
most disastrous condition, because
they are up against trust monopoly.
The farmers are forced to pay the
highest percentage of taxation. The
taxes of the farmers have been in
creased in a most alarming fashion.
They amounted in 1913 to $624,000,-
900; today to $1,436, 100000. The
general property tax is directed chief
ly against the farmer rather than
against other property owners. The
local taxes increase the burden of the
working farmer to an intolerable de-
gree. Even Secretary of Agriculture
Jardine was forced to admit that the
farmers spend not less than 30 per
cent of their net income for taxes.
REORGANIZATION of agriculture is
another reason for the ruin of the
farmers. The number of tractors,
which in 1920 was $4,000, by 1926
had grown to 100000, and in 1927
amounted to 100000. The use of COM
bines is spreading, each of them dis
placing three harvest hands. The
poor farmer is too poor to buy ex-
pensive machinery. His farm is too
small to utilize machinery to it's full
extent.
Industry is trustified and by vir-
tue of its monopoly is able to control
the prices of machinery and all the
other goods the farmer must buy. At
the same time big business is able to
dictate the prices of all products the
farmer must sell. There is a whole
series of special forms of exploita-
ton to which the farmer is subjected,
He is at the mercy of the powerful
capitalist agencies of distribution of
farm products, the railroads, meat
packers, milk trusts, huge elevator
combines, gamblers and cotton brok-
ers, banks, and the government farm
credit legislation.
The basic reason for bankruptcy of
the working farmer is trust monopoly,
is capitalism.
All agricultural credit is in the
hands of the banks. The cooperative
organizations of the farmers are
chained to capitalism by means of
credit. Tariff, which is supposed to
"protect" not only industrial products
but agricultural products as well,
operates only in the interests of the
big trusts. All the promises of the
and democratic parties have
amounted only to betrayal of the
farmers, and have only been in the
interests of the bigger landowners and
farm banks.
The big lesson the working and ex-
plotted farmers must learn from their
own desperate situation is that they
must break off their alliance with the
bankers and other factors of big bust
ness and must form an alliance with
the working class. The fate of the
McNary- Haugen farm relief" bill and
the McFadden branch banking bill is
the best proof of the futility of any
alliance of the farmers with the bank
ers. The farm bloc in Congress which
speaks in the name of the working
farmers, but is in fact the expression
of the interests of the big landowners
and farm bankers, made bargain
with the representatives of Wall
Street to the end that both bills should
pass jointly in Congress. Indeed.
both bills passed. But President Cool
idge, as the highest exponent of big
business in the government, signed
only the McFadden banking bill and
vetoed the McNary- Haugen farm re-
lief" bill. And the so-called friends
of the farmers-banker Dawes, mil
lionaire Lowden, the farm bloc, the
"Progressives" such as LaFollette,
Norris, Shipstead and their ilk-are
Only enemies of the exploited farmers
in the disguise of friends.
The working and exploited farmers
and the industrial and agricultural
workers must fight shoulder to Shout
der against their common enemies;
against big business, against the
trusts and against the government of