Evening star., 1938-02-06
Rearing His Family on $1,1OO
Is the Farmers Real Problem
House.to-House Investigators Disclose Interesting
Picture of Farm Income, Varying in
Different States
By THOMAS r. HENRY.

By THOMAS r. HENRY.
TINE American farmer must raise his
family on an income of about
/ S1,1oO year
This includes cash and the market value
of milk, eggs, vegetables. meat, fuel and
other farm products used by the household.
1t is about the same as the income of the
medan village family and trifle less than
the middle income in small cities
This figure is not all estimate" 1t was
obtained from a house-to-house canvas of
nearly $4,000 families on farms and vii
lagos in different parts of the Nation by
w. P. A. workers under tie direction of
the Bureau o. Home Economics of the De-
partment Of Agriculture The object of
DR.. Louise Stanley, director of the project,
was to get realistic rather than statis-
tical picture of farm-hOwe economics At
each home the investigators made a rigid
, check of the income from every source and
how it was spent.
Mediar, Not Average.
The income is expressed in the final re-
port in terms of ''median" rather than an
'averaee.' The latter-the total income
of all the families divided by the number
might not have any meaning as applied to
q small community. In farm community
OF 20 families, for example, there might be
one millionaire with an income of 100000
"a year. All the others might have an in
come of $1,000 per family The average
income in this community would be close
to $4,000 year. This might easily be mis-
interpreted as meaning that each family
had an income OF 81 1000 year
The "median," used by Dr. Stanley, is
the halfway point. Half the farm fami-
lies in the United States-insofar as they
are fairly represented by the big cross sec
ton included in this study-receive less
than $l,l00 year and half more. In
practice it is almost the same as an aver
age, except that it gives a fairer picture.
All families on relief were left out. The
idea was to find out how much families
actually earned, and how they lived on it.
Farm family income naturally differed
q good deal in various parts of the country
and with different kinds of farming. BY
areas it works out as follows, Dr.. Stanley
reports:
Vermont dairy farming, SLAP; New
Jersey truck farming, sl,37l; Pennsylvania
general farming, S1433; Ohio general
farming. s1,195; Michigan general and
dairy farming, $1,000; Wisconsin dairy
farming, Sl,293; Illinois corn and small
grain farming, s1,493; Iowa corn-hog
farming, 1895; Kansas wheat farming,
1892 North Dakota wheat farming. S593;
Colorado, Montana and South Dakota
range farming $751; California fruit farm
= ing, sl379: Washington dairy and poultry
farming, $1,000.
In North Carolina where tobacco was
the chief crop, the median income ran from
1852 for colored share croppers to s1,988 for
white owners. In South Carolina, where
there is a combination of tobacco and
cotton farming the medan ran from SAT-
and s644, respectively, for white and
eolored share croppers to s698 and 81, ,43S,
respectively, for colored and white owners
Some Get Side Jobs.
Everywhere it was found, the farm
families were getting almost all their in
come from the land with occasional side
Ajohs to help out In New England the
money from non-farm sources averaged
only Sl86 family. In the central area
the range was from SO in Iowa to $3.50 in
New Jersey, where farmers can get odd
Jobs in the towns and villages. In the
mountain and plains regions there was
range from S6l in North Dakota to Sl38 in
Colorado. On the Pacific Coast the in
comes from outside the farms were much
larger, ranging from 1926 in Oregon to
&679 in Southern California. In the
South the income from non-farm sources
AWas very small, ranging from S13 month
for colored share cropperS in North Car
olina to $l27 for white farm owners in
Georgia 1t ran to median of S307, how
ever, in Western North Carolina, but here
the actual income from the farms them
Gelves was almost at the vanishing point.
The average farmer everywhere, the
survey shows, sees very little actual money
In the course of a year. Low as his in
come is good deal of it is in the form
pf farm products used in his own home.
Here's Vermont, land Of mountain
SIldQOWeQ Dlue lakes, ldlllll vi StlOllSlOlu
Of individualism. Upon the thin soil of her
glacier -scraped hillsides farmers have had
hard time earning living for century,
and life is getting no easier. 1t is for the
most part dairy State, with supplemental
income from maple sugar and summer
boarders.
The survey included SAB normal Ameri-
ean families. True to Vermont tradition,
6nly 5 per cent OF them had been on relief
during the year. All the others had man
aged to get by somehow. Thirty-seven
per cent had total incomes of less than
$1,000. Sixty-six per cent had less than
$500. Only 2 per cent had $4,000 or
more. The general average was s1,343-
s1,157 of the farm and s1s6 from odd
= Jobs, writing for the papers, interest on
Investments and all other sources. The
farmer and his wife got 5000 cash for
bis milk, butter. eggs. cheese. maple sirup
potatoes and pumpkins. The rest of his