Evening star., 1940-10-20
RuroI Poverty Held
Greatest Problem
BIZ Frederic J. HdSkin.

posed of some 100000 farm families
that are existing on abnormally low in
comes and at unwholesomely low stand
ards of living. Many are in extreme
poverty. These are the findings of the
Farm Security Administration in its
task of helping to rehabilitate those un-
fortunate families whose future is not
rosy.
Almost 1000, 900 of these rural families
were on relief in 1885, and relatively few
of them are better off today. But as
pl oducers and consumers, this group of
low-income farm people has been forced
to retain primitive standards in a mod
ern world. While the big commercial
farms have adopted highly efficient ma
chinery and modern agricultural meth
odS, most of these 100000 families still
use horse-draWn equipment and hand
tools, and employ the same farm man.
agement patterns which were common
g century ago. While the tides Of tech
biological progress have swept across the
country, this group has been left to one
side in a sort of stagnant eddy. They
constitute problem No. in the Nations
rural life, and the solution of that
problem-if it can be solved-is barely in
the making.
Ten years ago about 80 per cent OF
the farm products sold on the market
came from so per cent of the farms. The
other half of the Nations farmers were
receiving only one-tenth of the gross
cash income from agriculture. Since
that time, the growth of industrialized
farming has continued to squeeze the
more poorly equipped farms out Of the
commercial market.
Mechanization, which usually is asso-
ciated with large-scale, commercialiZed
farming, has continued at a rapid pace
There were 1.527989 tractors on Amerl-
can farms on April l, 1898, the last time
a survey was made. More than a third
OF these had been purchased since 1885.
More tractors were sold in 1927 than
were in use on all American farms in
1920 Figures on farm machinery gath
cred in the 1910 census are not yet avail
able, but those who study the trend of
mechanical farming say that an un-
precedented increase is anticipated.
AS result OF this mechanized farm
ing, thousands of tenants and share
croppers have been forced to the status
of day laborers with only part-time en-
ployment. For example, on a typical
Delta plantation, the introduction of
tractors and four-row cultivators re-
duced the necessary number of tenant
families from 40 to "A. Other teChno-
logical improvements have greatly de-
creased the demand for farm labor. The
Nation now can meet normal require
ments in farm production, both domestic
and foreign with 1000 900 fewer workers
than decade ago.
In the face of this declining demand
for farm labor, the farm population is
still growing faster than any other
group. The annual increase in the
working farm population is now about
445000 persons. In the past. most OF
these people would have sought work in
the cities, or would have cleared new
frontier lands. Today the majority of
them have no alternative but to join
the army of migratory farm laborers,
already swollen far beyond normal needs
by families forced of the land by
drought and mechanization.
To make matters worse, the largest
increase in population is taking place
in the areas with the least economic
opportunity. The 400 counties of the
country with the lowest living standards
are those with the fastest growth OF
population. In five rural problem areas
regions with much poor land, low in
come and high birth rates-15 to 20 per
cent of the families were on relief in
1884 and 1885, or twice as many as in
normal areas. Federal aid has amount
ed in some instances to 5000 for each
man, woman and child. In other rural
areas the average is below $50 per
capita.
The cities offer no haven for this huge
surplus agricultural population. because
labor saving machinery has been stead
lily decreasing the demand for industrial
workers. BY the middle of 1887 indus
trial employment had recovered to about
the 1929 level but unemployment had
increased by about 1000 000-approxi-
mately the number of new workers add
ed since 1929 It is estimated that by
1945 there will be another 100000 new
potential workers, nearly half of whom
are growing up in farm families.
These problems Of surplus population
and chronological change have been
added to a number Of less spectacular
but even more deeply rooted maladjust-
ments in the Nations rural economy.
For generations agriculture has been
gradually undermined by unsound ten
ure systems, careless and unScientific
tillage practices, widely fiuctuating
markets. and an appalling wastage of
land through soil erosion.
Rural poverty is not an emergency
condition which might be cured auto
matically by an upturn in the business
cycle. Its symptoms were familiar long
before the Civil War. For more than a
century the United States carried on a
program of rural relief under the guise
of free land. Until recent times farmers
who lost their property through fore
closure, or whose acres were exhausted
by erosion and one-crop tillage. could
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