OCR Text |
Show PAYROLL OF CIVILAZATION MET BY FARMER By Peter Radford Lecturer National Farmers' Union The farmer la the paymaster of Industry and as such he must meet the nation's payroll. When Industry pays its bill it must make a sight draft upon agriculture for the amount, I which the farmer Is compelled to honor without protest This check drawn upon agriculture may travel to and fro over the highways of commerce; com-merce; may build cities; girdle the globe with bands of steel; may search hidden treasures In the earth or traverse the skies, but In the end it will rest upon the soil. No dollar will remain suspended In midair; It is as certain to seek the earth's surface as an apple that falls from a tree. When a farmer buys a plow he pays the man who mined the metal, the woodman who felled the tree, the manufacturer who assembled the raw material and shaped It Into an article ar-ticle of usefulness, the railroad that transported It and the dealer who sold him the goods. He pays the wages of labor and capital employed In the transaction as well as pays for the tools, machinery, buildings, etc.. used In the construction of the commodity and the same applies to all articles of use and diet of himself him-self and those engaged in the subsidiary sub-sidiary lines of Industry. There is no payroll In civilization that does not rest upon the back of the farmer He must pay the bills all of them The total value of the nation's annual agricultural products is around $12,000,000,000. and it is safe to estimate esti-mate that 95 cents on every dollar goes to meeting the expenses of suo-eldlary suo-eldlary Industries The farmer does not work more than thirty minutes per day for himself; the remaining thirteen hours of the day's toil he devotes to meeting the payroll of the hired hands of agriculture, such aa the manufacturer, railroad, commercial commer-cial and other servants. The- Farmer's Payroll and How He Meets It The annual payroll of agriculture approximates $12,000,000,000 A portion por-tion of the amount la shifted to foreign for-eign countries tn exports, but the total payroll of industries working for the farmer divides substantially as follows: Railroads. $1,252,000,000; manufacturers, $4t365,000.000; mining, $655,000,000; banks, $200,000,000; mercantile $3,500,000,000. and a heavy miscellaneous payroll constitutes the remainder It takes the corn crop, the most valuable in agriculture, which Bold last year for $1,692,000,000, to pay off the employes of the railroads; the money derived from our annual sales of livestock of approximately $2,000, 000.000, the yearly cotton crop, valued at $920,000,000; the wheat croo. which is worth $610,000,000, and the oat crop, that is worth $440,000,000. are required to meet the annual payroll pay-roll of the manufacturers. The money derived from the remaining staple crops is used in meeting the payroll of the bankers, merchants, etc. After these obligations are paid, the farmer has only a few bunches of vegetables, some fruit and poultry which he can sell and call the proceeds pro-ceeds his own. When the farmer pays off his help he has verv little left and to meet these tremendous payrolls he has been forced to mortgage homes work women in the field and increase the hours of his labor. We are, therefore, there-fore, compelled to call upon all industries in-dustries dependent upon the farmers for subsistence to retrench in their expenditures and to cut off all unnecessary un-necessary expenses This course is aoBolutely necessary in order to avoid a reduction in wages, and we want If possible, to retain the present wage scale paid railroad and all other industrial in-dustrial employes |