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Show 'CITIZENS OF GREGORY, S. DAK., I BELIEVE 'IT'S TIME TO CHANGE' ! Farmers Remember Triple A Benefits but Feel, Too Much Centralized Control Is Unhealthy. By BARROW LYONS (EDITOR'S NOTE This is one of a series of articles written for this paper by Barrow Lyons, staff correspondent of Western Neivs-' Neivs-' paper Union. He has just completed an extended trip through the nation and in these reports gives his first-hand impressions of what rural America is thinking as we enter the third year of war and the first weeks of a presidential election year. Any opinions ex-' ex-' pressed are the writer's and not necessarily those of this newspaper.) GREGORY, S. D. This is a young town even as west-j west-j ern towns go. It was planted by the government in the heart I of the prairie the country of the Rosebud Sioux Indians j 39 years ago when the land was opened to homesteaders. With the exception of the lean years of grasshoppers and I drouth, when dust storms obscured the sun, Gregory has J thrived. It has a population of 1,400, and is the chief trading Usually, the Republicans have I carried the county by a slight majority. ma-jority. In 1924, year ot the Coolidge landslide, the GOP got 54 per cent ot the votes. Again last year the Republican percentage was the same. But in the first New Deal election Roosevelt left the Republicans Republi-cans only 26 per cent of the vote, and in 1936 42 per cent. But in 1940 the voters veered to the other side, and 53 per cent of the votes were tallied under the Republican emblem. em-blem. Even though the people of Gregory Greg-ory dislike many things about the New Deal, they do not forget the years when the Triple A saved them through seed loans, helped them to hold their produce for better prices and brought new ways of farming that made the prairie soil more profitable. Most of them think today that the time has come for a change. This is true even of some of the most staunch defenders of the New Deal, who feel that the administration is becoming too entrenched In power, too set in its ways, too far away from the people. Gregory is on the edge of the cattle cat-tle country,- but there is extensive growing of wheat, corn, barley and forage along with cattle, hog and sheep raising. Here is to be found the conflict con-flict of social and political trends that underlie the whole fabric of American politics today the clash between the conservatives ajid the liberals the traditional and the new those seeking safety safe-ty and those set for adventure. Dramatically illustrating this conflict con-flict are the views of two men living liv-ing on farms that are close together, both of whom took up homesteads 39 years ago when the land was opened, both of whom have had their ups and downs, but are today more prosperous pros-perous than ever before. One is E. C. Biggins, wheat farmer, farm-er, who came here from the cattle country along the Missouri Breaks. He knew the Indians, ranched and E. C. Biggins Wm. Sinkular Two farmers two views, ran cattle, broke wild horses and played poker. Of him a friend remarked: re-marked: "He's the kind of man who's always been independent and doesn't want to be told." He doesn't like the New Deal. He is 67 years old, and farms 400 acres. The other is William Sinkular, who raises cattle, sheep and hogs, and most of the grain which he feeds them. In the last few years he has netted between $12,000 and $15,000 a year from his 1,920 acres. He was the first around Gregory to join the Non-Partisan league, one of the first to speak up for the Roosevelt administration. "I saw this land come up from nothing. People thought they were making money. A man took a homestead, home-stead, borrowed money on it and made improvements. They drove the price of land up to where one could mortgage a farm for $10,000 to $12,000. Rural Credit Took Land by Foreclosure "Then the deflation came. Steers we thought were worth $50 to $60 dropped to $12 to $14. Rural Credit took land in foreclosure resold rich farms for $1,500 not a little but a lot of it. When the boom was on we were offered $200 an acre for our land. We saw its value go down j N. D. V FARGO S.D. i soux! GREGORY FALVL NEB. COL OMAHA I to where we couldn't get $10 an acre for It. "Today we are again in a boom period, but a man who has reason knows he's not really making money. mon-ey. There's nothing that promises you security. The administration has promised good prices for two years, but they can't keep such promises. "Now I like a Democrat, but I can't stand a New Dealer. They're trying to do all the things that were never thought of before. They're trying to shove this farming back to the birth of Christ When they begin telling you how much wheat to raise and what to do wasn't that what they did in Egyptian times? "I growed up right beside the Sioux Indians. They'd come in on butchering day and pick up scraps, , but they'd never work. The , New Dealers, most of them around here, are just like that. The administration administra-tion tried to rehabilitate them, but they won't rehabilitate, most of them." Educational Program Helped Country Now let "Bill" Sinkular state his case: "The New Deal not the whole setup set-up gave the farmer an educational program that's been a life saver for this country. In 1934 this country coun-try was a desert. It had been ruined by dust storms and drouth. In 1934 I received $1,800 for seed, and It saved my farm. "But I don't think all the subsidies sub-sidies they are paying out now are necessary. AU that money that's being paid out now to farmers who are prospering must be paid in by somebody. I don't think the subsidies are an attempt to buy votes; but the farmers themselves should know that inflation -won't do them any good. "Many farmers would take anything any-thing they could get hold of, and yet these same men are the greatest great-est enemies of the New Deal the men who have profited most from it." H. E. McKee, vice president and director of the Northwest Security National bank, and manager of the Gregory branch, strongly supports this anti-inflation point of view. He has seen the deposits in his branch mount from $751,000 at the end of 1941 to $1,830,000 today, and in the same period has seen loans decline from $694,000 to $430,000. Farmer-speculators Farmer-speculators are buying up the land today at prices that are too high, he declares. "In the last year," he said, "the Regional Agricultural Credit corporation corpo-ration has been lending money to anyone who would take care of more livestock to increase the meat supply. sup-ply. In 1940 there were 1,632,000 head of cattle in the county. Today To-day there are more than three million mil-lion head. It is the same with sheep and hogs; and it is about the same in other western states. "What we are doing is laying up an enormous surplus on the farms. If they let this go on for another two or three years it will wreck farming. We'll have the same condition con-dition that occurred after the last war." |