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Show NATION'S FARMERS ARE DISSATISFIED WIDESPREAD SPIRIT OF UNREST SHOWN IN REPLIES TO QUESTIONNAIRES. Inability to Obtain Labor Because of Lure of High Wages in Cities and High Profits of Middleman is Cause for Dissatisfaction. Washington. Indication of a widespread wide-spread spirit of unrest and dissatisfaction dissatisfac-tion among the farmers of the country, so threatening as likely to disturb the existing economic structure, Is considered consid-ered by government officials to be revealed re-vealed In more than forty thousand replies to a questionnaire recently sent out by the postoffice department. The. replies as thus fur digested were summarized in a report prepared by George L. Wood, superintendent of the postoffice department's division of rural mails, and read to the senate K)stoffice committee Friday by James I. Blakeslee, fourth assistant postmaster postmas-ter general. The views of the farmers farm-ers were obtained by the broadeasting of 200,000 copies of a questionnaire throughout the agricultural states, asking for suggestions whereby the postoffice department might aid in cutting dowu the cost of living. Answers to the questionnaires have been coming in since the middle of December at the rate, of a thousand a day, and while a small percentage of them are from well-satisfied farmers having no suggestions to make, the great proportion, as summarized by officials, show the major complaints of the fanners in numerical order to be: Inability to obtain labor to work on the farms, hired help ano the fanners' children having been lured to the city by higher wages and easier living. High profits taken by middlemen for-the mere handling of food products; pro-ducts; and, Lack of proper agencies of contact between the farmer and the ultimate consumer. , Many of the replies, said one official who had looked over them, probably as much as 50 per cent, indicate that the writers contemplate either leaving their farms or curtailing acreage under un-der cultivation, because of one or more of the three major grievances and because be-cause of the growing feeling against nonproducing city dwellers. Commenting on the replies, Assistant Assist-ant Postmaster General Blakeslee said : "Such a condition at a time when the predominant cry is for production, and still more production, cannot but constitute a grave menace." |