The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1935-05-17

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now on the relief rolls. Last year one
family in every four was on relief.
Chances Are Slim.
According to the report, the tenant
! farmers chances of recovery are slim
under a credit system which enables
the landowner to borrow money at
Az to 6h per cent interest while the
tenant farmer cannot secure this cheap
credit unless the landowner valves his
first lien on the crop" The landowner
can seldom afford to do this.
eff he refuses to release the crop
lien to the governmental agency, the
Federal Farm Credit administration,
the landlord may then secure the loan
| for all his tenant farmers at AZ to 61a
per cent, and then advance supplies
and furnishings to his tenants at Gus
tomary prices-20 to 80 per cent above
| cash prices.
Here again the tenant bears the
| brunt of the risk. If he can repay, his
surplus is wiped out by the extortion-
ate credit charges; if he cannot repay,
he loses his crop and whatever work
stock he may possess" says the re-
port.
$50 far the various debt reconcilia-
| ton commissions have made no at
tempt to have the landlords scale down
the debts owed them from previous
seasons by troopers and share tenants.
Such proposals would be resented, no
doubt by landowners who had just had
| their debts scaled down by creditors"
| Doctor Embree's committee says that
| the United States must 'reorganize
| the system of land tenure in the
South" The negro problem has long
been an obstacle to such a program,
but the committee is of the opinion
that the country has seriously over
estimated the Importance of the negro
farmers numerically as competitors,
since tenancy in the South has come to
| be essentially a problem of white farm
ers"
The committee distinctly frowned
upon continuing indefinitely to encour-
age landlords to cut down their pro-
| duction. 1t advised the raising of
crops other than cotton in the South
east, with foreign competition in cot.
| ton growing increasing and Texas and
| Oklahoma able to furnish all the cot
| ton needed for the national market at
cheaper cost of production" Yet it
admits an advantage in the fact that
eho hor ant oOt
| ton growing by some 100000 acres,
| is in a position to force balanced ag
riculture on farmers who can't get cot
ton off their minds.
No money crops and no crops to be
sold can be raised on these 100000
acres. Rather, crops for home use are
encouraged, as well as crops which
| tend to improve the soil and prevent
erosion and teaching.
I'm the course of time the govern
ment might find the outright purchas-
ing of certain farming lands less ex-
pensive than the payments of rents.
| Such payments rightly expended would
serve to start worthy tenants in land
ownership and remunerate large and
absentee owners for portions of their
excessive holdings" the committee
says.
Would Need Help.
Of course such farmers turned loose
upon their own land, but restrained
from raising the only crop with which
most of them are familiar or expert
enced would need helpful supervision,
but their properties-small subsistence
homesteads-might bid fair to approach
the economic state of some of the
most prosperous peasant-owned farms
in Europe, the committee believes.
| Such a program would certainly
meet with approval from the thousands
of homeless share-croppers who have
hit the southern roads without food
or chattels, bound in most cases for
| the cities, there to seek what relief
they can from the proper agencies.
| Some of them write to the President in
pitiful, hardly readable letters, implor-
| ing him to aid them. Some of them
have formed the Southern Tenant
Farmers union, whose allegedly radi-
| cal members have been said to be the
| instigators of violence in some in
| stances.
Designed to give these tenant farm
ers land of their own, after the man.
ner of European land-owning peasants.
is the Bankhead bill, proposed by Sen
ator John Fl. Bankhead of Alabama,
father of the glamorous Tallulah Bank
head, the stage and screen star, and
member of family which has repre-