Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-02-15

wears from now, Will CO1AoOAOuVS . ANAAAo-
mentally altered world?
During several days last month a
Kansas newspaper, Victor Murdock's
Wichita Eagle, recorded that the Re-
publican State Convention of last Sum-
mer had adopted a plank about farn1-
ing by corporations. The plank read:
THE Republican party is opposed to
corporation farming and believes that
the future welfare of Kansas depends
upon Kansas farming remaining In the
hands of the individual Kansas farm-
ers." And the House of Representa-
tives of the Kansas Legislature during
January passed two resolutions, one
calling on the State attorney general
to start proceedings to Gust farming
CORPORATIONS from Kansas. The other
was a bill to prohibit the chartering OF
any corporation proposing TO engage IN
! farming. The prohibition expressed IN
| the bill was specific and extensive. AS
approved for passage the bill would
''prohibit the chartering of any cor
poration proposing to engage in the agrl-
| tural or horticultural business OF pro-
ducing, planting, raising, harvesting or
| gathering wheat, corn, barley, oats, rye
! or potatoes and apples or other fruits,
or any other agricultural or horticul-
tural crop: or the owning, keeping,
breeding or raising OF poultry or live
stock and the milking Of cows for dairy
purposes"
one wonders what we have here. Is
corporation farming a valid economic
| innovation? Is farming in the future
to be carried on in units OF several
hundred or several thousand acres, by
corporation owners that employ farmers
in the way that corporation manufac-
turers employ factory hands? II 1t is q
valid economic innovation, VIII the
action of the Kansas House OF Repre-
sentatives appear in history as vain
attempt, even though most appealing
one. to resist economic evolution? IT
corporation farming is justif1able on
economic grounds, is it deplorable on
social and sentimental grounds? Do the
economic advantages to the country
outweigh the detriment to the 1ndi-
vidual farm owner who is displaced?
Corporation Farming Is New.
Kansas sentiment seems clearly dis
posed TO save the individual farmer.
I'm the Kansas concept" says ex-
Representative Murdock's paper, 1.-The
farm is the last refuge Of that indt-
viduaI unit in society for the principle
of which Kansas once nobly bled, and
to which starry ideal Kansas early
hitched its wagon"
Corporation farming Is very new-so
new that it is still time to weigh, as
Kansas is trying to do. the relative ad-
vantages, economic and socially, OF the
new and the old. How many readers
of this article have realized that cor
poration farming has progressed to the
point where a State Legislature takes
| notice of It? As late as 1929 there
were in Kansas, according to the
| Wichita Eagle, two farm corporations.
''It Is reported that there are now 20.
| One is said to hold $4,000 acres OF
wheat land. There Is very large stock
investment in these corporations, much
Of the shareholding by people living
outside Kansas The promoters
of corporation farming point to the ad-
vantages of low cost Of unit produc-
ton (28 cents a bushel for wheat Is
claimed) through mass output. reduced
overhead, seasonal Tin place Of annuaD
labor, and quantity purchase price
edge on machinery and supplies and
economies in bulk handling"
If corporation farming Is ahead OF us
what types Of agriculture will 1t absorb?
Farming" is a broad word. 1t covers
| quarter sections of land devoted solely
| to raising wheat or corn, and at the
other end of the scale. suburban two
or three-acre plots devoted to raising
chickens.
The writer Of this article not long
| ago talked with the one American who
has introduced a greater number Of in
| duStrial innovations than any other
! person in his generation. This indus
| trial pioneer is confident that for the
raising of staple crops, wheat, corn and
the like, corporation farming Is sure to
come He Is certain 1t will 60 this far
and thinks it may ultimately take in
practically every sort of farming. He
thinks the ideal unit, or at least the
smallest practicable unit, will be about
1000 acres.
Quantity Dairying Makes Start.
This industrial authority is sure that
farming will be done in units OF large
acreage, chiefly corporation-owned. He
is less sure, but thinks it possible, that
much of the farming of the future
may be done as an incident Of manu-
facture. He pictures corporation whose
principal business will be the making
Of steel or furniture or machinery or
automobiles or whatnot. Such cor
/ poration will own, somewhere on in the
| country, 2 or 10 or 10000 acres OF
land. On a fine day in early Spring
the manager will take 200 or 800 Of
the factory employees to the land. This
| force of factory workers in five or six
days, with adequate machinery, will
! pillow the soil, fertilize 1t and otherwise
prepare ii, and plant the wheat crop.
Again, on a fine day in the Fall, the
manager will take the needed number
| of employees, and with adequate ma
chinery will reap and thresh and store
| the ripened crop, all within week.
That vision may be practicable, for
crops like wheat or to less degree
corn, in which the total quantity of
days Of labor expended on the crop is
small. I suggested, however, that, Of
course, dairy farming in the East would
continue to be done by individual farm
ers. I was told. however, that larg-
scale dairying, using the methods Of
quantity production, has already made
a start. On one Eastern farm 1850
cows in punches of so each are put
through the processes Of being fed and
washed and MIXED in a routine adapted
! from the methods by which Henry
Ford makes automobiles.
Aside from farming there are inno-
vations just beginning, which when per-
fected and enlarged may alter our ways
Of living during the next 20 years as
strikingly as they have already been
changed since 1900 by electricity, the
automobile and the internal combustion
engine. During last month for the
first time natural gas flowed into the
pipes that supply the city Of Washing
ton. The pipe line that brought this
natural gas from West Virginia, or
similar pipe lines. will shortly carry
natural gas to all the large cities in the
East. Hundreds of miles of pipe lines
are being laid from gas-producing ter
ritory in Oklahoma and Texas to
Chicago.
There is an industrial engineer who
says that within 10 years no one will
see q coal car on any railroad. Coal, he
says, will be burned at the mine mouth
the product of 1t. either as gas or as
electric power, will be conveyed to cities
through mains or on wires.
The same prophet says that within
] 10 wears in all our houses we shall turn