Evening star., 1939-02-26

"Tractored out" of their farms by in
creasing mechanization, thousands of
sharecroppers. tenants and small farm
ers have helped swell the ranks of the
Nations migratory farm workers to more
than half million.
revolutionary change in farming
methods, its course revealed only by dry
agricultural statistics, is leaving behind
it trail of human misery, resentment
and despair.
Displacement of the small farmer by
great mechanical farm factories is,
from an economic point of view, only
minor phase of the worldwide agricul-
tural problem created by huge crop sur
pluses and the collapse of farm prices
More important are the social and po-
itical implications of the huge increase
in farm families forced off the land,
turning to the cities and their relief rolls
or joining the hordes of migratory work.
ers. Rural unrest has increased as thou
sands of once independent farmers nave
become day laborers. able to make only
the barest of livings by following the
harvests
No Ready Made Solution.
Finding an answer to the problem is
the task of the Farm Security Admin
lStration.
The advance of farm mechanization
cannot be stopped. Like mass production
in industry, it is more efficient than the
methods it displaces. But neither can
its destructive social effects be ignored.
Teaching the small farmer to compete
with the mechanized farm through CO.
operative methods offers one line of at
tack. There is no ready-made solution
guaranteeing success, but already expert
mental cooperative communities spon-
sored by the Farm Security Administra-
ton are pointing the way to solution.
The farmer was once his own master,
growing his own food, consuming most of
what he grew, selling small surplus to
buy the things he was unable to produce
himself.
Climatic and soil conditions were
partly responsible for gradual shift to
market crops. Farmers found they could
grow cotton, tobacco, wheat or corn on
a large scale and make money at it.
Slavery and the cotton gin made the
one-crop system possible in the South.
Machinery aided its spread to the wheat
belt and other areas. Power production
of wheat began we'll before the turn of
strides during the World War. Demand
increased and prices scared at a time
when men were needed for the armies.
Machines filled in and the soil produced
more abundantly than ever.
Huge Crops Glutted Market.
In all parts of the world the use of
farm machinery increased and produc
ton was stepped up. Huge crops glutted
the international markets.
With the collapse of prices farm debts
mounted. Many small farmers were
squeezed out.
Ruined by flood and drought, unscien-
titic ona-crop farming, unsound tenancy
systems and the destruction of the soil
by erosion, more than million farm
families turned to the Government for
aid during the depths Of the depres-
sion. But it is significant that agricul-
tural depression in the United States
came IN period of, good crops.
Mechanization of the grain farms in
the pre-war years did not upset the
Nations economic structure. Small land
owners, renters and day laborers could
always move to homestead farther
west. and industrial expansion absorbed
many Workers.
Today free land capable of producing
9. decent living has disappeared. Indus
try faces its own problems of technologi-
cal unemployment as well as bHsiness
depression. Meanwhile mechanization
has speeded up a2d is spreading to all
parts of the Nation.
Sales of tractors, from light, rubber
tired machines to huge track-type Diesels
capable of doing as much work as so
horses, reveal the trend
In 1890, some $4,000 tractors were
sold in the United States. In 1887 sales
for the year were 247 900.
The increase was not absorbed in the
grain-raising States, formerly the best
markets. Tractors increased 879 per
cent in 10 Southern cotton States be-
tween 1890 and 1887. The increase for
the United States as whole in that
period was only 237 per cent. The cot
ton States had 1872 per cent Of the