Imperial Valley press., 1941-01-12

proximately one-eighth of the ma
tion's gross returns. Our farmers
receive approximately one-third of
the dollar the consumer pays for
his products. In some European
countries, the farmers receive more
than three-fourths of what the con-
sumer pays for his products.
Dollar Value
In 1915, the American farmers
dollar received was on a par with
the dollar he spent. Therefore he
was on a parity basis. In recent
years, his 1915 dollar basis has
dropped to seventy-five cents. This
difference means an annual loss
to our farmers of more than two
billion dollars. His taxes educate
approximately one-third of the ma
tons children. The living condi-
tions OF our rural population is no
credit to the rest of us. A recent
nationwide survey shows the aver
age value of three million farm
homes to be four hundred seventy
five dollars each. More than one
third had no screens, and only five
per cent had water piped into the
house.
Try and visualize an American
city of three million homes like
this Five years ago survey of
the southern states revealed nearly
one fifth of the farm homes had
no toilet facilities whatever, not
even of the most primitive sort. In
some sections, fifty per cent of the
school children had hook worm in
fection. Three and one-half mil
lion rural families received public
assistance during the past decade.
Our farm tenant condition is dis
grace to our nation. Space does not
permit much of that story.
Tenant Farming
We have fourteen million ten
ants who occupy more than one
fourth of the total area of the
United States, and one and one
half million of these farmers move
annually. They are increasing at
the rate of forty thousand families
per year. This is not racial prob
lem. Seventy-seven per cent are
whites, and only twenty-five per
cent Negroes. Their income is the
lowest of any group of workers of
a given classification in this ma
ton.
Since our increase in population
comes largely from the rural people,
their welfare presents a most SER
ious study of our human resources.
We can we'll consider some plan
comparable to the British Parlia-
ment Act of 1903, when eighteen
million acres of farm lands in Ire
land was divided up among the
tenant farmers, and sold to them
without any down payment on
terms Of sixty-eight years at two
and three-quarterS per cent inter-
est annually, plus small payment
on principal.
Way Of Life
Farming in this country is a
way of life, and not a means of
making money but that WAY must
be improved. "One thing seems
clear, our agricultural land re-
sources if equitably distributed and
carefully managed, appear ample
upon which to rear rural civiliza-
tion the like of which this world
has never seen in enhanced stand
ards Of living. But IS>such a civiliz-
alton likely to be reared by those
who see in agricultural science only
the servant of a highly commercial
lied agriculture?" This is not a
problem of few large land owners
1t cannot be solved except on a
nationwide scale. The operators
OF large scale farms more than one
thousand acreS) controlled two hun
dred seventy-five million acres in
1880, three hundred and fifty mill
lion acres in 1910. Mechanization
has played its part too. Tractors on
our farms in 1915 were insignificant
In 1910, they numbered more than
one and one-half million. I'm the
main and over the generations, the
standard of living of a nation can