Golden Age, August 19, 1931
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The Golden Age
A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE AND .COURAGE
in this issue
FARMING
PRESENT AND FUTURE
CRIME OF VACCINATION
RUSSIA '
THE MYRTLE
"I AM A CATHOLIC5’
NEW COVENANT
FOR THE NATIONS
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Vol. XII .No. 311
August 19, 1931
LABOR AND ECONOMICS
AGRICULTURE AND HUSBANDRY
$3 a Week in Massachusetts . 749
Reduction in Family Incomes . 749
Seattle Social Welfare League . 749
Salaries of Railway Executives . 750
American Dole System Inferior . 751 Too Bad They Begged . . .752 Low Wages for Dress
Manufacturing . , . . .753
SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL
Posies by the Roadside . . . 749
Falls of Persons in Railway
Service ........ 750
North American Indians Reviving 751
Coal Operators’ Association . .751 99.000 Deaths by Accident . .752 Empire State and Eiffel Tower . 752 The Art of Learning , . . .753
Long-Distance Brevity . . . .758
MANUFACTURING AND MINING
Great Find of Bauxite .... 750
Textiles, Incorporated . . . .753
Farming—Present and Future . 739
Chinese Potatoes in Northwest . 739
46,000,000 Acres Abandoned . , 749
Army Worms in Mississippi . . 750
The Myrtle ........ 759
SCIENCE AND INVENTION
Universe Self-Perpetuating . . 749
A Modern Electrified Home . . 750
HOME AND HEALTH
Spinach for Anemia ..... 749
Vaccination Murders in England 749 No Bovine Tuberculosis in
Humans ........ 750
Death Rate Is Down . . . .751
The Crime of Vaccination . . . 754
TRAVEL AND MISCELLANY
FINANCE—COMMERCE—TRANSPORTATION
Canadian Pacific Items . . . . 748
North Carolina’s Profitable Waters 751
Billions of Profit in Dope . . .767
Spain Reducing- Army Burdens . 749
Some Australian Anomalies . 751
Russia and the “Daily Mail” . .756
POLITICAL—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN
Germany Whipped at Last . . .748
Restitution in Ireland . . . .749
London Post Takes Crack at Us 750
In Prison and in Chains . . .759
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
One Priest to Every 100,000 . ,753 “I Am a Catholic” ..... 761 New Covenant for the Nations . 763
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Golden Age
Volume XII Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, August 19, 1931 Number 311
Farming ■—Present and Future
FARMING is a partnership between man, the soil and the weather. One of the world’s most successful horticulturists once said to us, “When we fail to get a good crop, we always know that it is our fault. We have not done the right thing at the right time.”
Possibly, in view of last summer’s great drought, some would consider the above statement too broad; but as a general truth it holds good. The Lord usually provides enough cool, invigorating days, enough warm, moist ones, enough sunshine, enough breezes, enough heat, to develop and mature the crops which can be grown in a given climate.
The soil is important, too. Almost any kind of crops can be grown on some kinds of soil, but other soils are naturally adapted to but a limited number of crops. If they are to be used for growing other kinds of food than that usually grown upon them, they require to be rebuilt or reconditioned to adapt them to the work in hand.
The farmer himself is one of the most important of the three factors. We know of an instance where forty years ago the dwellers on a stony piece of soil in eastern Pennsylvania lived in the direst poverty, being able to obtain from it only the most meager sustenance. So desperate was their plight that they were known to recover from the highways the droppings of the horses, to be used as plant food, yet on that same area today five families are living in affluence, maintaining a truck and several splendid autos and living in homes that have every convenience and comfort of modern life, including electricity. They are getting this all out of the same fields, which today are a delight to the eye, a perfect picture of fertility and plenty.
The Competent Farmer
It must be admitted that today, in order to succeed in the farming business, a man must have a greater variety of exact knowledge and make better use of it than in almost any other ' 739
business. He must change his plans with every change in the weather, and the decisions must be quick and accurate. Certain conditions often make it necessary to do two days’ work in one. The decision as to when to do a particular piece of farm work is of great importance. Harvesting requires dry weather; plowing requires that it be moist but not wet; the driving of fence posts is done to best advantage when the soil is completely saturated with water.
A truly competent farmer must be a good judge of the weather, a good architect and builder, a good mechanic, a good judge of soils, and a good biologist. He must be a first-class salesman and an expert buyer. If he is wanting in any of these things someone is sure to try to take advantage of him, and the farmer has been taken advantage of in all ages up until now.
Taken as a whole, the farmers of today are about the best-informed class of citizens we have. It has been said that “if Julius Caesar should enter any legislative assembly in America today he would be unable to tell the farmer from the banker. The farmers and bankers listen to the same music, the same talks, the same jokes over the same radio at the same moments. When the farmer’s daughter drives to town in her auto she is wearing the same style of hat and gown as her city cousin.” -
Here and there are some who think it is still the province of the city man to prey upon the tillers of the soil. A New York mail order house sent to up-state farmers some unordered goods, stick pins, neckties, socks, etc. If the goods were not promptly returned, bills and threatening letters were sent to the farmers. One such farmer receiving the first letter wrote in reply: “Goods received. I do not want them and will be glad to return them to your duly authorized representative on payment of one dollar for storage on same.” In at least that particular case, the attempted biter got bit.
The farmers are always confronted with some
new swindling schemes. In 1930 thousands of bushels of wheat were stolen from Kansas and Oklahoma, wheat farmers. This wheat was mostly taken from bins on farms where there are no improvements. The farmers soon found out what to do. They scatter throughout the wheat little sheets of marked paper, one hundred sheets to each thousand bushels.
It was the pioneer farmer who made America. His capacity for hard work and his willingness +o take a chance created a class of men who think quickTr and act forcefully. The training which these men received in wrestling with the forces of nature made them independent to the point of touchiness, and makes them a class of people that, when deeply stirred, are capable of powerful collective action for either right or wrong, depending upon how they are guided to the decisions.
The Choice of a Farm
The most important choice any man ever makes in this life is his decision as to whether or not he will spend his life as far as he is able to the glory of God’s name. His second most important choice, most people would say, is as to the one who shall share his home with him. This is still an exceedingly important item in the life of a farmer or in the life of any man; but really as a business move, the most important thing a farmer ever does is to select his farm. Tie might find some other girl that is just as good or pretty nearly as good, but the old idea that a farm is a farm and that any one of them can be readily transformed into a productive and profitable enterprise is not quite true, despite the illustration mentioned in the forepart of this article.
Why, under present conditions, settle for life on a farm which is badly located as respects markets, roads and good neighbors; which has poor soil, poorly drained, poor buildings, and is in a run-down condition, when farms which are the opposite in all these particulars may as well be had?
But we might allow that there are not enough first-class farms to g8 around and that for family or other reasons it might be desirable to build up and operate a deserted or run-down place. This can be done. Soils can be drained. Water standing near the surface of a soil causes the development of a shallow root system; then, •when the water level sinks in midsummer, the crops are unable to reach it and water is allimportant in the production of crops.
The Canadian Department of Agriculture in its studies of soil moisture and crop production claims to have disclosed that in the production of one bushel of wheat, nature uses over thirty-one tons of water. We do not know just how this calculation was reached. It seems extremely large. We give it for what it is worth.
After a soil has been impoverished by the continuous growing of one crop, it is benefited by discontinuing the growing of that particular crop and raising something else. This not only gives the soil a rest, but interferes more or less with the development of the enemies and parasites wdiich have come to make their home in the neighborhood with the expectation of preying on the crop to wdiich they are accustomed.
Soils winch are poor at the outset can be built up by the legumes in the manner explained by W. H. Barton in The Golden Age Nos. 247 and 263. Buckwheat has won a well deserved reputation in the north as a poor soil crop, the first tobe planted in subduing newly cleared territory.
A wise farmer carefully plans his different fields for crops especially suited to the conditions they present. Thus a stiff, heavy clay or silt is naturally reserved for grass and grain crops; wdiile a lighter, sandy loam is chosen for corn, potatoes, beans, or some such cultivated crop.
Ohio has a soil doctor, an expert agricultural chemist, engaged in the wmrk of reviving weak and run-dowm farm lands. Equipped with a kit of all kinds of fertilizers and chemicals he travels on a light truck and stops at scheduled points where growlers come in with their problems and samples of their soils.
As early as 1840 New England had on its hands the problem of deserted farms. Many New/ England farms which would now provide a living if properly worked were deserted for the cheap and rich western lands.
The best proof that depleted lands can be brought back is found in the fact that they have been rejuvenated by the methods described in Mr. Barton’s articles. Many a farmer has lived and died poor because he did not know that each day the solid and liquid manures should be taken out and put in a fresh place. The average barnyard is the farmer’s wastebasket, and his ruin.
Most soils contain a large reserve, of plant food, but it is only through natural weathering processes that the mineral matter is slowly converted into plant food. There are in America at least one hundred million acres of land, well located and rich, but wholly or partially unproductive because in swamps or overflowed seasonably, which could be reclaimed by cooperative action aided by the State. In due time all these acres and millions more will be productive.
The Choice of Crops
Certain crops, such as corn, potatoes, oats and alfalfa, are grown in every state in the Union. The most important crop is maize, or Indian corn, in America universally called “corn”. This crop exceeds in value any other, and in most years exceeds any two other crops.
Though grown in every state in the Union, the corn belt proper extends from western Ohio, through northern Indiana and Illinois, covering the whole state of Iowa and northern Missouri. It reaches its greatest density in north-central Illinois, in the prairies between the Wabash and Illinois rivers. The first European settlers in America found this crop growing here under cultivation by the Indians. Potatoes are another product native to the American continent. Next to wheat and rice, corn and potatoes are two of the most important of the world’s food products.
The wheat belt is divided into two parts: the northern belt centers in Minnesota and the Dakotas; while the southern belt covers southern Indiana and Illinois, central Missouri, and Kansas and Nebraska. Eastern Washington is also an important wheat-producing area. Except in the Northwest, wheat is sown in the fall. .The land is plowed to catch the equinoctial rains, and the wheat goes in at about the first frost, to beat the Hessian fly.
The cotton belt begins at North Carolina and extends southwestward and westward midway between the mountains and the sea to central Texas.
Practically all of California’s oranges are produced on a strip ten miles wide and sixty miles long. The orange belt of Florida also covers a comparatively restricted area.
In planting crops, the farmer is obliged to consider which crops and how many shall be raised. The small grains require much labor at planting time only. Corn, potatoes, sugar beets, and cotton require constant summer cultivation, and harvesting can be done only by hand. Consequently, the farmer who has mainly his own labor to depend upon must avoid a combination of crops of which the busiest seasons correspond or overlap.
Most American farmers raise the crops where the soil, climate and other conditions are best suited to them, and pay little attention to the problems of transportation to centers of consumption. The wheat growers of Kansas and Alberta consider as a matter of course that there is no reason why they should not compete in the markets of Liverpool, regardless of their long, expensive haul. Owing to the long growing season in California and the Southwest, alfalfa there yields six or more cuttings a season, instead of three or four as in the East.
Originally the farm provided its own food, clothing, and shelter. Gradually, with the increase of manufactures, the farmer came to buy more of his essentials from those who could make them faster, better and cheaper. To do this, he raised large acreages of the crops that brought him the largest net profit. Thus, the special lines of farming, such as wheat raising, potato growing, and cotton growing have been developed.
The principle of crop rotation was known and practiced three thousand years ago. The principle of letting the soil rest once in every seven years .is set down in the Scriptures as a law by 'which the Israelites were to be governed. The real owner of the earth is the Lord, and in due time He will establish and enforce the law’s under which it will be cropped.
The Farm Animals
The raising of cattle has always been a frontier industry. Before the soil was broken by the plow, the natural grasses furnished cheap and abundant pasturage and gave the farmer food for his table while clearing operations were under way. Man is now measurably independent of the horse, but it will apparently be a good while before he will be independent of the cow. Ox teams have not all passed, but they are passing. In Vermont, in 1929 there were 599 oxen, as compared with 725 in the previous year.
Horses and mules seem to be passing out too; yet there are still a great many, and it is claimed that there are 5,500,000 mules and some 14,500,-000 horses, despite the immense number of 26,-000,000 gasoline-driven vehicles. The growers of cotton, rice and sugar cane have proven to their own satisfaction that the mule can do more work for less money.
A farmer has to stop, look and listen before he purchases a tractor. If the machine is used for only a few days each year, his overhead charges are very heavy. It is claimed by experts that a traction engine cannot be profitably employed on a farm of less than 240 acres. One great disadvantage attaching to farm machinery is that the use of any particular machine is limited to so few days durmg the year.
Farmers all over the country still make much use of horses for agricultural work. There are 3,000,000 in France, and 4,000,000 in Germany. In 1788 there were but five horses in Australia; in 1850 there were 159,951; now there are 2,250,361. In Great Britain there are 1,204,198 horses engaged in agriculture. •
The New Hired Man
The new hired man made his appearance one hundred years ago, in the midsummer of 1830, when Cyrus H. McCormick, at Rock Ridge, Va., demonstrated a crude horse-power machine which cut ripe wheat and threw it on a platform from which it might be raked into bundles.
In the days when wheat was harvested with a sickle and dressed with a flail, it required thirty-five to fifty hours of labor per acre for a yield of fifteen bushels. With the tractor and combine the same result is now accomplished in three quarters of an hour.
Consider what a vast amount of human labor has been dispensed with in the growing and harvesting of wheat. The myriads of harvesters once needed to gather in the crops are no longer required, and the food which they once ate is now stored in bins, seeking a market.
The multiplying of agricultural machinery explains why the proportion of the gainfully employed which was engaged in agriculture declined from 83 percent in 1820 to 26 percent in 1920, and why 4,000,000 of the farm population have abandoned agriculture in the last decade. ■ A quantity of grain may be sown today in thirty-three minutes that sixty years ago required ten hours and thirty-six minutes; and a job of harvesting can be done in one hour that would have taken forty-six hours and forty minutes in 1850.
On a rvell-managed farm a gasoline engine pumps the water, drives the water system, operates the farm light plant, grinds wheat, saws wood, operates the grain elevators, runs the grindstone, mixes concrete; and, in fact, someone has said that the small gasoline engine will do practically anything a hired man can do except take the hired girl to towm on Saturday night.
Planting Eleven Hundred Acres in a Day
The San Francisco Chronicle tells of a man in Colusa, Calif., who sowed 1100 acres of rice in less than a day. He did it by airplane. In China it would have taken 5,000 workmen a month to sow and replant that rice, and the whole 5,000 would have worked in the fields every day until and including harvest ; but the man who sowed the rice harvested and dressed it by tractor in a few days, with less than a dozen men. In China most of the rice would have gone to feed the workers who raised it; in America it is all for sale. .
Seventy-five years ago, the average agricultural worker in the United States could care for but twelve acres of crops. Now, considering the United States as a whole, he can attend to thirty-four acres, and in some small states the average is more than one hundred acres. On an individual farm it runs as high as 300 acres or more. The less farm, labor there is employed, the less work there is for the farmer’s wife, who does not have such a large crew for which to cook.
The modern farmer is continually on the lookout for any mechanical device that will save labor. In a wheat-growing district in Washington, the wheat is delivered eighteen miles by a pipe line. The grain slides through a one-inch galvanized iron pipe direct to the railroad station, where it is either sacked or run directly into the freight cars. Haulage costs, which would be about fifteen cents a bushel, are, by the pipe line method, reduced to less than two cents a bushel.
Statistics show that the average farm income is in the neighborhood of three times the value of the machinery on the farm. In Florida, where the value of machinery on the farms averages $30.43, the yearly income of the farm-worker averages $119.72; in Iowa, with machinery averaging $196.55 to the farm, the farm-worker’s average annual income is $611.11; in North Dakota, Avhere the machinery averages a value of $238.84 per farm, the average income per farmworker is $755.62.
. It is very apparent that it is unprofitable to grow cereals as money crops unless enough can be planted to warrant an investment in seeders, harvesters, binders, etc. In America between 1910 and 1920 there was a tremendous jump in the value of machinery on farms. By 1920 the value of machinery on farms had increased to $3,594,772,928, a gain over the 1910 figures of $2,329,632,145, or 184.1 percent.
Less Food Used by Animals .
When one considers the vast increase in the amount of farm machinery in the United States in recent years, it is very apparent that the work which is being done by the machinery is not being done by horses or mules and the food which they would have eaten is not consumed. Today it is estimated that 52,905,000 acres are needed to supply food for our horses and mules, but that is 18,492,500 fewer acres than were necessary for this purpose in 1920.
Though the farmers of America constitute only 4 percent of the farmers of the world, yet because of their improved machinery they produce 70 percent of the world's corn, 60 percent of its cotton, 25 percent of its wheat, oats and hay, 13 percent of its barley, and 7 percent of its potatoes.
Mechanical servants are not as well cared for as they should be. We have seen the statement that in Kansas the loss on the average farm due to machinery’s being in bad order when most needed is $100 per year.
The effect of farm machinery in reducing the number of men engaged in agriculture is noticeable in England and Wales, where the number engaged in agriculture between 1911 and 1929 gradually shrunk by about 130,000.
In Sweden about 45 percent of the farms are using electricity for lighting and power purposes, but in the United States the shortsighted power trust is so intent upon grabbing everything that they have ignored this market, and as a consecpience not more than 3 percent of American farms are receiving electric current from poiver lines.
"We do not know how efficient the device is, but a machine has been developed in England for curing hay by the application of electric current.
A device which is saving labor, and therefore operates in the same direction as labor-saving machinery, is the use of paper strips for the growing of pineapples in Hawaii. The growers raise 30 percent more pineapples than they otherwise would, and save labor too.
Within the last year a two-row mechanical picker has been demonstrated by a cornfield survey at the college of agriculture at the University of Illinois. Hand husking took 5.1 hours more labor per acre, not counting the horses and wagon, but the new two-row picker needed only 2.2 hours for the same work and transported itself.
The Drift from Farm to City
■With the largest part of the work on the farm being done by machinery it is inevitable that many residents on farms should seek employment in the cities. Hence it is not surprising to find that while our farm population in January 1910 was 32,076,960, yet in January 1929 it had fallen to 27,511,000. Meantime the general population of the United States had increased more than 30 percent.
Not only are there 4,500,000 few’er farmers, but there are actually 150,000 fewer farms in the United States today than there were in 1930. Farmers complain that they bear the cost of rearing and educating children and then deliver the finished product to the city. The nation’s child crop, as well as its food, comes mainly, from the farms. There are approximately 7,700,000 children under ten years of age on farms, as compared with 5,700,000 in cities having an equivalent total population.
A survey of 20,000 farmers who left their farms and moved to the cities shows that 7,500 went because help on the farm was scarce, 5,000 because old age was coming on and the work was too hard, 4,000 because they were giving up to sons and sons-in-law, 2,200 to get adequate schooling for their children, and 500 because they had saved enough to obtain in the cities what they had been unable to get on the farm.
Somebody has said that for the first time in American history our unemployed have no place to go. If they are in the cities they cannot floe to the land, because the farms already produce more than can be satisfactorily sold. If they are on the farms they cannot go to the cities unless they wish to lengthen the bread lines. After the fourth generation, the energy of the country man is worn out in the city.
'A Great Social Loss
The shift of millions of intelligent people from the country to the city has certainly lowered the once high standard of American country life and is therefore a distinct social loss. As one New England farmer tersely put it, “This old farming community is like a fish pond with the game fish all fished out. All we got loft now is the bullheads and suckers.”
The present world-wide depression in all lines has led to a temporary slackening in the movement away from farms. Although the net movement away last year was 151,000 persons, an increase of 359,000 births over deaths on farms brought the farm population on January 1,1931, to 27,430,000 persons, as compared with 27,222,-000 persons on January 1, 1930.
It is conceded that farm women are still overworked, although not as much so as was formerly the case. A survey of 700 farm women found that they were working more than sixty-three hours a week, of which time fifty-two hours and seventeen minutes a week was spent on homemaking activities; while eleven hours and thirteen minutes was spent on daily work, caring for poultry, gardening, and other tasks.
At the national convention of representative farm women held in Chicago, there was a generally expressed desire for better sanitary conditions, more conveniences in the home, better educational advantages for the children, more time for recreation, better clothing, a bank account, and more and better literature. In all these respects farm women seem to be no different from other women, because the things they want, everybody wants.
Sixty farmerettes who came from Middletown, Md., to make a two-days’ study of the city of New York admitted that they would rather go back to their farms than to have to live in the big village which houses the Empire State and Chrysler buildings.
The former French premier, Tardieu, declares that the security and stability of France at the present time of world economic crisis is due to the protection and encouragement accorded to the French farmers. G. W. Russell, famous Irish scholar, expresses his alarm at a condition which has developed, in America, in which in ten years 4,000,000 persons have left the land, 19,000,000 acres have gone out of cultivation, and 89,000 farms have ceased production. He considers it a dangerous situation.
It is perhaps not generally known that we have in southern Alberta the largest collection of aristocratic land owners in America. To this place have come princes, barons and counts, some with plans of establishing a feudal system such as prevails in Europe; others to work as farmhands before starting on ranches of their own. Still others have bought farms to be managed by a foreman, a place where they could come for a rest.
The 'world’s farms are being counted. The census is expected to cover 97 percent of the sum-face of the earth and 98 percent of its population.
FaiTS—€onege3—Conferences
Soon after 1800, the fair took its rise, and now over 3,000 fairs are annually conducted, devoted to the interests of farming. The first known agricultural association was that of the Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture, founded in 1723 by a group of Scottish agriculturists.
The first regularly organized agricultural experiment station in America was established" at .......
Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., in ..... 1875. There are now experimental stations in every state and territory in the Unites States, including also stations in Alaska, Hawaii, Porto Rico and Guam. All together in all parts of the world there are 728 such institutions.
European stations are usually confined to single lines of investigation; while American stations generally embrace several departments. The European stations do not issue bulletins of information, but the United States stations do.
Germany wras among the first nations of the world to establish agricultural colleges and experimental stations, followed closely by Belgium and Holland. France, Great Britain, and practically all the countries of Latin America have organized departments of agriculture dedicated to the promotion of the agricultural interests of their own national territories.
The first agricultural conference took place in England in 1929; the second one took place at Cornell University in 1930; the next one is planned for some European country in 1933. At the conference at Cornell University it was ... mutually agreed that agriculture is depressed throughout the world, with the exception of Russia, and that the United States is one of the countries most- gravely affected. It was also agreed that agricultural economics cannot be separated from economic life in general. The farmer prospers or suffers in accordance with the changing conditions in finance and commerce.
The grain conference held in Europe early this year in an effort to decide what to do with the world’s surplus wheat was a complete failure.
Millions Yet to Be Saved
Scientists are only now beginning to think of saving by-products of the farming business. A million dollars has recently been put into the organization of a corporation that will utilize cornstalks. It is stated that more than 3,000 separate chemical materials can be produced from the three fundamental raw materials which are found at present in the country’s enormous . waste of cornstalks.
Among other farm wastes for which uses are being found are straw, oat hulls, peanut hulls, pea vines, bean plants, and dried pods.
If the pioneers could only have foreseen, what a boon to our country it would have been if they had left more of our virgin forests. They -wasted the treasures of a continent, but without realizing what they were doing; and probably another generation will say of us what we say of them.
Is There Overproduction?
During the World ’War the allied countries found themselves cut off from Russia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary, which hitherto had supplied a great part of their wheat. They called upon the rest of the world to make good the deficit, with, the result that the farmers of Canada, the United States, Argentina and Australia cleared and sowed new lands, and in four years the sown area overseas from France increased as much as in the previous forty years. Moreover prices for the wheat were raised from one to three dollars.
As soon as the war was over, the Danubian countries and Russia sought to regain their previous -wheat markets, and by the peculiar methods which she is following, Russia at least, which before the World War exported about one-fourth of the world’s exportation, is bound to regain the business which she lost. Moreover, at the beginning of this year, it was stated that Soviet Russia contemplates an increase of 19 percent in her wheat acreage to be seeded this spring, above last year’s total.
America needs not more than 600,000,000 bushels of wheat, yet regularly produces 800,000,000, and on one occasion, namely, in 1925, produced 1,000,000,000 bushels. The area devot
ed to raising wheat in the United States in 1930 was larger by 14,000,000 acres than it was before the World War. Kansas alone put 2,000,000 acres more to seed than it ever did before. Between 1911 and 1928 the world increased its acreage and production of wheat by 27 percent. In fifteen years Canada has increased its wheat acreage 14,084,700 acres, the United States 10,378,200 acres, Argentina 5,930,400, and Australia 3,459,400. ■
In 1930 Canada had bumper crops of all grains, 11,000,000 bushels more of wheat than was first expected, an increase of 46,000,000 bushels of oats over the year before, 35,000,000 bushels more of barley, and 9,000,000 bushels more of rye.
Europe, including Russia, is still the largest grain producing area in the world. In 1928 she produced 1,381,000,000 bushels of wheat, while the United States yielded 903,000,000, Canada 534,000,000, Argentina 310,000,000, India 390,000,000, Australia 159,000,000.
Since 1921, Italy has been engaged in a vast scheme of interior colonization. As a result, since 1921 approximately 2,000,000 acres of formerly useless soil have been made available for the farmers, and the production of wTheat has increased 50 percent, from 46,000,000 quintals in 1924 to 70,000,000 quintals in 1929. (A quintal is 100 kilograms, almost two bushels.)
The Farm Board
It is quite evident that the experts at Washing-. ton do not know what to do about the wheat situation. The particular reason why the European wheat conferences were a total failure is because the United States did not say what disposition it intends to make of the more than 200,000,000 bushels which it bought at prices far above the market (about 92c a bushel), and at last accounts still held in storage.
Senator Borah thinks that the wheat should be sent as a gift to China to create among the starving Chinese an appetite for wheat bread. The Farm Board has stated that it cannot follow a policy of buying at prices above the market, paying heavy storage charges, and selling below cost. Hence it urges farmers to reduce -wheat acreage by 20 percent, and in some sections of the country the farmers are making an effort to do this.
At the same time that the government farm board is trying to get the farmers to reduce their wheat acreage, the experts in the government agricultural colleges are bending every effort at showing the farmers how to raise more wheat; all of which shows just how foolish our civilization is: one bunch of experts shouting that wheat production must be curtailed because nobody is making any profit on the wheat they raise, and another bunch of experts shouting that there is imminent danger that the whole human family will die of starvation because of the ravages of insect pests.
The scientists have not been wholly a boon to agriculture. Indigo, once an agricultural staple in India, is now altogether synthetic. Tanning materials are also made synthetically, and the fats which have been produced from peanut oil and cottonseed oil have resulted in decreased prices and markets for natural lard.
The Marketing Problem
Don’t ask us to tell how to sell at a profit for about 70c a bushel several hundred millions of bushels of wheat which cost the growers an average of $1.22 per bushel to raise. We do not know the answer to this problem. We do not believe it has any answer. We explain here that it is the department of agriculture which puts the average American cost of raising wheat at $1.22 a bushel. The tariff commission made this cost 20c more, or $1.42 per bushel. If the farmer has to sell his wheat for 70c a bushel he is apparently selling it for but little if any more than half what it costs him.
The United States Wheat Growers’ Association, embracing 150 growers in western Kansas and eastern Colorado, have agreed to hold their 1931 crop for sixty days after harvesting in an effort to obtain $1.00 a bushel for their grain. They have also agreed not to sow any seed wheat next fall unless that price is reached. It is almost certain that they will fail to get the price they seek.
Some Kansas farmers this year were so discouraged over the low price for wheat that they sold their growing grain for $2.00 an acre, and one man offered to sell 3,000 acres at a dollar an acre.
In Oregon last winter, one farmer who had between 6,000 and 7,000 acres, most of it in wheat, used dressed wheat for fuel, claiming that at $16.00 a ton it makes a cheaper fuel than coal at $20.00, and that it makes a hot, even fire, particularly good for banking overnight.
Some farmers have noticed that there is a big difference between the 70c, which they receive for a bushel of wheat, and the $6.60, which they pay for the same wheat when made up into one-and-a-half-pound loaves of bread. However, the price of bread has come down since this complaint was made.
The prices for farm products are inextricably bound up with a great variety of other subjects. A great war in which millions of men are taken from the fields and set to murdering one another inevitably sends the price of farm products skyward. The great industrial development of the 19th century accomplished the same result, because it brought into the factories millions of men who would otherwise have been in the fields.
There were waves of agricultural prosperity between 1850 and 1873, and between 1904 and 1914; and there were periods of agricultural adversity between 1822 and 1848, and between 1875 and 1900. We are going through a period of depression now. Wheat has reached the lowest price since 1896, and land cannot be sold for half what it would have brought in 1920.
The farmers are often discriminated against in legislation. During the World War they were allowed to receive but $2.00 per bushel for their wheat, whereas they should have been given $3.00. In 1920 the Federal Reserve Bank undertook ahead of time to do to the farmers what is being so successfully done now; i. e., the farmer was deflated by the Federal Reserve at the same time it was engaged in the happy process of inflation. In effect they took to themselves what should have gone to the farmers.
In the period from 1909 to 1925, the personal indebtedness of American farmers grew from $1,000,000,000 to $3,250,000,000. In 1880 three-fourths of the farmers owned their land; today over one-third are renters.
The agricultural crisis is universal, farmers in Canada, in Australia, and on the continent of Europe are all suffering together. Canada has been so hard hit that there has been desperate talk of secession. Farming operations in New Zealand the past year have been conducted at a loss. Farm taxes are twice as high as they ought to be. The taxes of the farmers build up and maintain expensive highways which are hammered to pieces by buses, trucks and pleasure cars owned by others.
When the farmer’s goods get to the market he does not receive a fair price for them. He is actually given but 37c on a dollar of what the customer has to pay. The remaining 63c goes to the people above mentioned who wear out the roads built with his money.
The farmer is disadvantaged by the practice of chain groceries of selling loss leaders, i. e., putting out butter, eggs and milk for less than cost so as to attract attention to other items. This has the effect of establishing low face values and compelling the farmers to dispose of their products at a price considerably less than their market value.
At Peerless, Mont., in March, eggs were sold as low as 5c a dozen, and in some instances they could not be sold at all and there was so little demand for them that they could not even be given away.
In 1928 the average store clerk earned $2,100; the average worker in manufacturing industries earned $1,700; and. the average farm 'worker earned $1,000. Two years later the earnings of the farm workers had dropped to $540.
Senator Brookhart declared that ten years from now there will be no Yankee farmers; but there will be 12,000,000 peasants doffing their dirty caps to superiors who command them; but Senator Brookhart is mistaken. At the present rate of progress it would not take ten years, and before ten years, we think, the full establishment of God’s kingdom will have changed everything. In that happy era it will be literally true, ‘'■'Behold, I make all things new.”
An item which may be mentioned here is the fact that while aviation has brought an element .of interest into the farmer’s life, it has not always brought him profit. There have been not a few instances in which his growing crops have been used as a landing field, not altogether to their benefit, and the only reward the farmer has received, if there were survivors of the visit, has been the consciousness that he was helping to introduce a new method of transportation.
The Big Menace—The Corporation Farm
A farm, according to the United States census, is any plot of land which requires the service of at least one person during the greater part of the year. In the South, a farm is a plantation; in the West a farm'is a ranch. In 1930 there were 5,000 farms of less than three acres.
Farming has entered the machine age, and the small farmer is today as definitely out of the race as the old-style shoemaker who built shoes to order. The great Western plains are especially adapted to the use of machinery. In the year 1927, Thomas I). Campbell, of Harden, Mont., had 4,000 acres in wheat and 7,000 acres in flax. The Farmers’ National Company of Omaha, C. J. W. Classen, president, manages 635 farms in Iowa, and Nebraska. D. H. Doane, of St. Louis, operates 200,000 acres and has a dozen farm managers working for him.
Banks, and insurance and land companies, are taking over and managing farms wholesale. There are today many thousands of corporations actively engaged in farmingin the United States. This is in spite of laws in a number- of agricultural states, like Illinois and Iowa, forbidding such farm operation by corporations. All a farm corporation needs to do in order to get around these laws is to hire a lawyer to fix up the papers. Corporations in the United States do what they please, as they please.
There are corporations running cotton plantations in Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana. They have fruit ranches in 'Washington; seed companies in Michigan; poultry farms in Ohio; potato farms in Wisconsin; onion and peppermint farms in Indiana; and a farm in Missouri is especially devoted to the production of a kind of corn from which corncob pipes are made. There are hundreds of farming corporations in Wyoming, Idaho and adjacent states. Other corporations grow oranges and lemons in southern California, and there is a corporation duck farm on Long Island.
One corporation farm in Kansas contains 50,000 acres. The farm is operated by gangs of laborers. The corporation is not interested in having families live on its land. In 1917 there were 35,000 farms in Montana; now there are 14,000 farms, the other 21,000 having been swallowed up.
Ail over Iowa the Yankee farmers are going broke, and the mortgage-holding trust companies of New York and Chicago are taking everything they have. Many banks, having sucked the lifeblood out of the farmers by the iniquitous interest system, are now operating chains of farms under trained farm managers at $1.00 per acre as their fee.
The world’s largest farm is, of course, the great Russian farm of approximately 224,000,000 acres, which farm, operated entirely by machinery, is expected to produce not less than 22,000,000 tons of wheat in the year 1933. This is about twice as much as Russia ever exported in a single year before the World War.
We do not see how anything can prevent the Russians from raising wheat more cheaply than it can be grown in any other part of the world, and if they succeed in marketing their grain in Europe, it is a foregone conclusion that worse times are ahead for the grain growers of the Western world than they have ever yet seen.
We see no way out for them, nor indeed for the Russians or anybody else, except in the administration of earth’s tangled affairs by the only Ruler competent to administer them, namely, Christ Jesus, Jehovah God’s representative appointed for that very purpose and even now seated upon the throne of His glory and coming into His own.
Items from Canadian Pacific Passenger Bulletin
CANADIAN PACIFIC—Long Run Engine
System for Western Lines. Following an experiment conducted last spring (described in Section 18, Bulletin 259), when the Canadian Pacific Railway locomotive number 2808 was operated from Fort William to Calgary over the nine divisions, hauling a transcontinental passenger train in scheduled time, and retracing the 1,252 miles with another regular passenger train, the Company is preparing to extend the system whereby locomotives will pull trains over several divisions, instead of over a single division as at present. Besides saving time and allowing passenger trains to move on accelerated schedules, the new system will have the added advantage of allowing the Canadian Pacific to make wider use of its newer and more powerful locomotives, available as yet in limited numbers, inasmuch as one of these new engines will haul a train as far as 1,200 miles at a stretch, instead of about 125 miles as under the divisional system.
The soundness of the economic principle underlying the operation of motive power over greater mileage already has been proved in one district where, by extending the runs of locomotives, it is now possible to do with thirty engines what formerly required fifty-one.
When the system of longer runs for locomotives is put in effect along the whole of the main line between Fort William and Vancouver, it will be necessary to operate only five motive power divisions, against the fourteen now in use.
Aachen, Germany—International Newspaper Museum. The largest collection of newspapers in the world has now been made accessible to the public. It could heretofore be visited only by special permission. This international newspaper museum was founded in 1886. Among its collections of 150,000 newspapers are curiosities from all countries and in almost all languages of the world, including an Eskimo paper and manuscript newspapers from the middle of the last century. There is a spiritualistic newspaper printed in white on black paper. One of the first socialist newspapers, dating from 1849, is printed on dark red paper, and there is a copy of the Cologne Volkszeitung of October 31, 1889, which contains a 30-line account of the hundred-year jubilee of the firm of Solomon Oppenheimer printed in gold letters.
Germany Whipped at Last
A T LAST Germany is whipped and admits it.
The last cuts in salaries have been made; there is nothing more that can be done. In a formal statement the German government says! “The putting forth of the last power and reserves of the nation entitles the German government, and makes it its duty toward the German people, to tell the world: The limits of the privations we have imposed on our people have been reached.” The villainies of Versailles have been carried on for twelve years; now the time has come when there must be peace if European civilization is to be saved. But it is too late; it will not be saved; it is trembling on the brink of chaos even now. Only God’s kingdom, which will take the place of Satan’s rule, can save the people. But Satan’s governments must go; all of them.
Posies by the Roadside
Basques Retain Autonomy
THERE will be a separate state within the Spanish Republic which will include the four ■Basque provinces. The Basques have their own language, Euskara, have 1,500 villages, and one of the oldest civilizations in Europe.
No Parking in Boulder City Streets
JN THE planning of Boulder City, Nev., all x cars will be parked in plazas near the center of the city. One of these plazas will hold 1,400 cars. The surrounding streets will be kept clear of parked ears.
Restitution in Ireland
THE Irish Free State Dail has passed legislation which will split up the large estates into small farms and divide them among the people. The Cosgrave government will finance the project, 'which will cost about $50,000,000, by an issue of land bonds.
Chinese Potatoes in the Northwest
YEARS ago British Columbia supplied China
with seed potatoes and taught the Chinese how to grow the tubers. This year the Vancouver markets were flooded with new potatoes grown from those seeds, while thousands of bushels of home-grown potatoes remained unsold.
$3 a. Week in Massachusetts Mills
NEW firms that have taken over abandoned
Massachusetts mills are reported as paying as little as $3 per week for full-time workers.This statement is made in a formal report by the women’s bureau of the United States department of labor.
Reductions in Family Incomes
fjlllE Girls’ Service League in New York attempts to get jobs for young girls, and questions applicants closely regarding home conditions. It found that in 1929 the average income per person per family was $10 a week. In May, 1931, the figure had dropped to $5 a week.
Seattle Social Welfare League
THE Seattle Social Welfare League reports that 2,000 families were dependent on it for food during the first four months of 1931. These families contained over 3,500 children who are thus being taught lessons it will be hard to unlearn.
46,000,000 Acres Abandoned
IN THE last eleven years 46,000,000 acres of American farm lands have been abandoned.
In New York state 125,000 acres are abandoned every year. Nevertheless, New York state is pasturing more cows and producing more food than at any previous time in her history.
Spinach as a Cure for Anemia
THE South Carolina Food Research Labora-— tories report that infants suffering from nutritional anemia have been completely cured in a very short time by the administration of powdered spinach in their bottles. The same powdered spinach was equally effective for anemic nursing mothers.
Vaccination Murders in Wigston
WIGS TON, England, is disturbed because exceptionally beautiful and attractive twins, four and one-half years old, were vaccinated on May 14 and died within twenty-four hours of each other on May 27. Further vaccination has been suspended in the district for the present.
Spain Reducing Army Burdens
SPAIN is cutting down her army officers from 21,000 to 6,000. The scheme for reduction includes the disbanding of 37 regiments. It is expected that a saving of approximately $20,000,000 will be effected. Cardinal Segura, of Toledo, whose unwisdom precipitated the church burnings, has been expelled from the country.
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Japanese Imitate American Restaurants
TEN years ago virtually all Japanese ate their food with chopsticks and sat on the floor while they ate it. Today there are 21,000 modern restaurants in Japan, with everything from doughnuts to ham and eggs served in American style. All the world is getting standardized, it seems.
Universe Self-Perpetuating After All
BEFORE the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, Professor Richard C. Tolman, of the California Institute of Technology, has admitted that, based upon the Einstein theory of relativity, the universe may be self-perpetuating after all. So the Wise Man had it right after all (Eccl. 1:4) when he said, “The earth abideth for ever.” ■
Salaries of Railway Executives
DURING the year 1930, in which the number of wage earners on American Class I railroads dropped by 14 percent, from 1,438,000 to 1,242,208, the number of executive officials was reduced by 5 percent, but the average monthly salary of the 95 percent retained was increased from $475 in January to $483 in December, 1930.
An Auto Lives Seven Years
THE average life of an automobile is seven years. The total registration at the end of
1930 was 26,523,779. Officials of the Scrap Iron Institute believe that 3,000,000 cars should be scrapped each year and are trying to arrange some plan with the makers and dealers by which this can be brought about.
Jewish Wedding in Spain
ON JUNE 10, in Madrid, there was a Jewish wedding, the first to take place in Spain in 439 years. The acting rabbi came from Morocco for the purpose of conducting the ceremony. The couple married were Sephardites, or descendants of the Spanish Jews expelled in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. The Jews contemplate a great synagogue in Barcelona.
Great Find of Bauxite
THE greatest bed of bauxite in the world has been found in Arkansas. This ore, which is the base from which aluminum is made, is found in a bed having a base of at least 165 square miles. Aluminum is widely used in the aviation, automobile, radio and petroleum industries, and was once much used for cooking utensils. Of late years many intelligent people are discarding its use for cooking purposes and are finding that their general health is greatly improved by so doing.
London Post Takes a Crack at Us
THE London Post certainly loves to slam the United States. In a recent issue it said:
The U. S. A., to its honor, has refrained from joining the League of Nations as a member, and therefore its policy, its behavior, its actions in Cuba, Porto Rico, San Domingo, Nicaragua, etc., are entirely logical. The U. S. A. knows perfectly well that while it displays a Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, the statue turns its back on the country—hence Prohibition; and also knows well that it would never do to afford to the subject races over which it pretends not to rule occasion for, say, an Al .Capone.
Wash the Dishes Once a Day
THE University of Chicago advocates washing the family dishes once a day, because the work now done daily in 38 minutes 8 seconds can be done in 22 minutes 58 seconds if done all at once. This is nonsense. Dirty dishes draw flies, and the dirt gets hard and can be removed only with difficulty.
Army Worms in Mississippi Delta
HITHERTO untouched by army worms the
Mississippi delta in and about Clarksburg, Mississippi, has been visited by millions of army worms. Whole fields of oats were obliterated in a day. Laborers were rushed into the delta and oats were cut ahead of time to save part of the crop.
No Bovine Tuberculosis in Humans
HpHE Unionist cites a medical expert as testify--L ing that he had never yet seen a case of bovine tuberculosis in a human, and then adds:
Medical evidence has shown that if a human creature can contract bovine tuberculosis, he can contract it from eating the meat as well as drinking the milk. Yet around 92 percent of all reactors, or tubercular cattle, are sold without warning to the public, as clean, sweet meat for which the packers pay about two-fifths of its appraised value.
A Modern Electrified Home
k HOME in Coscob, Connecticut, is so arranged that when the owner’s automobile headlights flash on his garage doors they open of their own accord. When he enters his garden gate his whole house is lit up, exterior and interior. The house is electrically heated, electrically cooled, has ten radio sets, and contains 100 electrical outlets for ventilating fans, piano, clocks, cleaning equipment, telephones, etc.
Falls of Persons in Railway Service
IN THE year 1929 there were 167 railway employees killed, and 6,867 were seriously injured, because they fell while at their work. A study of the causes of their falls shows that 52 percent of them resulted from failure to be sure of a firm grip and safe foothold; vvlrile 30 percent of them were due to falling over material, ties, rails, timbers, debris, and into holes. It is noticeable that in train service only 129 out of 7,034 accidents by falling were due to defective equipment.
Vienna's Barefoot Parade
IENNA has been treated to a barefoot parade of members of the League for People’s Health. The paraders believe that the earth gives out rays which are highly beneficial to the human mechanism, but can be absorbed only through the bare feet. And, anyway, we all like to go barefooted, and would do it, every last one of us, if it were not for what people would say.
Inferiority of American Dole System
TUDENTS of the American dole system condemn it as every way inferior to the British system by which government, employer and employee combine to provide help to the worker when he cannot get employment through no fault of his own. With the exception of 150,000 workers, Americans who get out of work must finance themselves or depend upon charity.
Ohio University Is for War
A A VOTE of 83 to 79 the faculty of Ohio
State University asked the board of trustees to make military drill optional. Five days later the president of the university put on the screws and by a vote of 141 to 64 the faculty reversed its position. Big Business is for w, and for preparation for war, and Ohio State had to fall in line.
Russia’s Bezprizorni Tamed ■
RUSSIA’S wild children, of whom, ten years -4 ago, there were 750,000 roaming the country in packs, committing robberies, murders and depredations of all kinds, are said now to have been tamed and brought into the service of the state. It is claimed that not more than 4,500 now remain ungovernable. By the end of this year the government expects to have all of these absorbed.
North Carolina's Profitable Waters
HE waters of North Carolina are profitable.
Thus, the Duke Power Company made a profit in 1929 of $5,867,641, while the Carolina, Power and Light Company made a profit of $2,422,708. The most profitable waters are in the watered stocks. Thus, the Duke Power Company’s stock is said to represent water to the amount of not less than $50,000,000, and it is a matter of record that the Carolina Power and Light Company watered its stock in the Pigeon River power project to the extent of $22,048,400.
North American Indians Reviving
HE North American Indians are being better eared for than previously, and as a result their numbers, once thought to be rapidly diminishing, are now actually increasing. In 1920 the census showed 162,023 Indians, in twenty-nine states. The 1930 census showed 221,620 Indians in the same states, an increase of 38 percent in ten years. .
Death Rate Is Down
HE business depression has affected the death rate. It seems that it always works that way. In hard times the people cannot eat themselves to death, as is their usual custom. Moreover they eat plainer food; and the plainer our food, the longer we live. Then we-have to hustle harder to make a living, and. exercise is the greatest longevity producer there is.
Some Australian Anomtdies
UT of 440,000 trade unionists in Australia it is estimated that 100,000 are unemployed, and there is yet another 100,000 of workers that can find nothing to do. Australia has tried to maintain artificial prices for things, all to no avail. Sugar which would be sold in Australia at' $50 a ton is kept out by an embargo. Australian sugar, in the meantime, is sold at $185 a ton, and the government gets nothing out of it.
“The White Man's Burden"
HE Knoxville News--Sentinel has an excellent caricature of Rudyard Kipling’s Jingo poem, “Take Up the White Man’s Burden.” It shows the white man staggering up hill under the weight of a colossal cannon that takes up the whole picture. The cannon is hundreds of times bigger than the man, and well illustrates that the curse of militarism is more than humanity can bear.
Logan County Coal Operators' Association
N EX-DEPUTY sheriff of Logan county, West Virginia, has testified that when he was a deputy sheriff he was paid a bonus of $100 a month by the Logan County Coal Operators’ Association. Now just why does anybody suppose a coal operators’ association would pay $100 a month to a deputy sheriff? Those who think it was in the interest of good government, please signify it in the usual manner. The noes have it. Manifestly it was merely a bribe.
Detroit's Tax Budget
THE Detroit Bureau of Government Research estimates that out of a total tax budget of $76,000,000 there will be a tax deficiency of $10,000,000, or about 15 percent of the whole amount. The cities of New York, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Cleveland, St. Louis, Baltimore, Boston, Milwaukee and Buffalo are now paying out in relief two and one-half times the amount expended at the beginning of the year 1930.
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