Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-10-13
PASSING OF SMALL FARMS
SEEN IN MERCER TREND
Machinery Is One Cause Cited-Co-
operative Ownership and Operation
Doubted, However.

arrive at this particular conclusion or
at any conclusion. But the notion that
farms and farmers must be merged,
that farming must become large-Scale
business operation-that idea is making
| much Roadway in many circles, espe-
cially business circles.
Next to enthralldom to the familiar
| by a curiously contrasting juxtapoSi-
tion-one of the most common habits
of thought is to assume that all change
Is good Once a change is upon us We
! call 1t progress" and once thing is
! called progress it becomes impious to
! question its beneficence. Sometimes one
fears that all motion, in whatever oirec-
ton, is called progress"
How Would People Vote?
Suppose this proposition were put in
/ the form of a referendum and were
submitted to a vote of the people-not
| Of the farmers only, but OF all the
| people. Would they vote that all small
| farms shall be wiped out and merged
/ into larger farms? Would they vote
( that way il they understood all the
other changes that would follow this
one?
If they should vote no" if they
! should will that We must retain our
| system of small one-family farming,
I
out their will? To put the question in
different words, is this thing that goes
by the name of economic revolution"
Is it an inevitable thing? Is 1t tyrant
to which We must submit whether We
/ like 1t or not?
AS to the social changes that would
accompany and follow an evolution
from small farms to large ones, it is
no more possible to be certain about
Thorn than olNo1lf tho ha cir ev011ftt0Y1
itself. One of these changes, however,
is fairly clear
If ten small farms are merged into
one large one there will be some Strik-
ing change in ownership. Will the large
farm be owned by one man? If so,
what will become of the nine others
and their families? Will they become
hired hands" who work for the new
owner for a wage? If so, is that de-
sirable? Is it good that ten families
now independent" in the old American
sense shall become workers for wages?
The new Farm Board at Washington,
now sincerely trying to help agriculture,
works in the direction of promoting CO.
operation. Giving help to many exist
ing farmers cooperative associations
and stimulating new ones is the boards
main activity.
Is it possible the large farms, if and
owned and operated? One is inclined
to answer no. The farmers co-opera-
tives already in existence do not con-
template cooperative ownership of
land; they aim merely, as a rule, at
cooperative selling of the crops. Even
with that limited function it has yet
to be proved that cooperation by
farmers can be universal success.
The history of cooperation so far
has been much more often history of
failure than of success. In the con-
gressional debates preceding the organi-
zatton of the farm board, one outstand-
ing Western cooperative was repeatedly
cited as success. as a model of what
the farm board could do. That CO.
operative, however, ran into difficulty
during the very months in which the
farm board was organizing.
Machinery Held One Cause.
Those who predict the coming of the
large unit of farming say that ma
chinery is one Of the causes. The same
article quoted describes the combine:
THE introduction into the wheat belt
OF the combine harvester has brought
about marked changes. The combine
is machine which cuts, threshes and
sacks the wheat in a single operation.
Two men with a combine can harvest
DAYS of actual work. The amount of
human labor thus necessary to harvest
400 acres of wheat is reduced from 125
days of man labor to less than 80 days.
The cost of harvesting a bushel OF
wheat is reduced from 30 cents to IA
cents. Until few years ago
very few of these machines were used
in the wheat belt. Prior to 1927 there
were only 100 such machines in the en-
tire Spring wheat belt, but over 400
were added that year. Two hundred
combines were operated in North Da-
kota alone in 1927. The railroads serv-
ing the Winter wheat belt of Kansas,
Oklahoma and Texas estimated that
there were $4,000 combines in that re-
gion on January /. 1928, an increase of
nearly 5000 within the year. Half of
the entire wheat crop in Kansas was
harvested with the combine in 1927. In
many sections of this region the inevi-
table result has been that many farms
have duobled in size and the number
of farms has been reduced by one-half,
This Is competitive process and causes
much suffering"
Echo in New England.
The operation of the combine in the
West has given rise to an echo in New
England among class of farmers who
never saw such a machine as a COM
Uule. i ne commissioner OF agriculture
in Rhode Island the other day made a
speech at meeting of the New Eng
land Council, a group of public-spirited
persons who are trying to bring pros
perity back to New England. The Rhode
Island commissioner said that the
farmers of New England are facing a
crisis comparable to the one they went
through rs years ago. when the rail-
roads first opened up the free lands of
the West.
The writer of this article knows a
thoughtful and sympathetic student of
farming who believes that all the rural
lands in New England and in most of
the East will become parks and forests,
that all the farming in America will be
done in the West.
That again raises the choice betwec1
economic law. SO called. and living =.
sire. Would we willingly decree that q
the farm land in New England become
parks and forests?