The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1934-09-28
BY CHESTER C.. DAVIS
Administrator, Agricultural Adjustment Act

BY CHESTER C.. DAVIS
Administrator, Agricultural Adjustment Act
In the course of achieving war
time expansion. in which he put
100000 acres of grassland to the
pillow, the American farmer greatly
increased his costs. In order to buy
mere land, to buy motor-driven
farm machinery, farm holdings were
heavily mortgaged at wartime val
ues; the average mortgage debt per
acre in 1920 was 235 per cent Of
what it had been in 1910.
The war prices for commodities
were worked back into the Ameri-
can farmers production costs; the
price of American farm land rose
in direct proportion to the prices
of the crops raised upon it. But
so long as prices we're rising, the
fact that costs were rising was OBJ
scured by increasing margins Of
profit.
During the years just before the
war, his income and his outgo bal
anced without stress on either side
of the scale. But when the military
phase of the war was at an end, and
military expenditures ceased, the
balance went against him with a
jolt.
Six Major Reasons
There we're six major reasons why
the American farmer did not share
in the good times of the 1920s.
1. During the war years the
United States, instead of sending
our surplus goods abroad to pay
debts, was in a position to receive
the SURPRISES of other nations goods
to pay their debts.
2. While American tariffs were
walling out foreign goods, European
nations we're closing their foodstuffs
markets to outsiders with tariff and
quota barriers and imperial pref
erences."
8. In such world markets as re-
NAMED, the American farmer was
meeting new competition.
4. The postwar antiimmigration
laws sharply restricted population
growth in the United States. For
many years the farmers of the
United States had enjoyed an ex-
banding domestic market. More
people are now leaving this country
than are coming in.
5. The American who was eating
Sc bushels of wheat per year when
the war started, had room for only
46 bushels in his diet during the
1920s, upsetting agriculture as a
whole.
6. The millions of horses and
mules had been displaced by auto
mobiles, trucks and tractors. The
horses and mules had eaten the
crops produced on 100000 acres of
land.
City Workers Affected
Any one of these six major
changes would have left the Amer
lean farmer with surplus. The city
workers who we're on the street be-
cause of the shrinkage in the farm
er's income were the largest group
in the American community to suf-
fer as result of his misfortune. but
they were not the only group.
The wage cuts and unemployment
with which they were all too IA
miliar were shared by the agricul-
tural laborers to whom, in 1926, the
American farmer had paid 1892, 000,-
600. The business of rural mer-
chants was practically at stand
still. A further group to whom the
fall in farm prices meant disaster
was the group holding the $10,000,-
100000 of American farm mortgage
debt.
Balance Was Lacking
What were the means proposed by
the Roosevelt administration to lift
the American farmer out of the
slough of depression? The farmers
central difficulty was the lack of
balance between his crops and his
markets. Year after year surplus
crops were breaking prices; as long
as his returns we're declining 1t was
inevitable that he should be able to
buy only fewer and fewer of the
things he needed and to pay only
less and less of his accommodating
debts.
The primary effort of the admin
istration has therefore been directed
toward the restoration of a proper
balance between the amount of
produce which is raised on Amer
lean farms and the amount of pro-
duce which can be absorbed by
available markets.
Tomorrow: The Agricultural
Adjustment Act, and How 1t
WorkS.)