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Show A "REAL" FARM PROBLEM The Country Gentleman decides there is no "average farmer." The phrase originated as the result of statistics put out by the Department De-partment of Agriculture after it examined 13,475 farmers out of more than six million in the United States. Also it points out that the phrase "average expenditure of farm families for clothing" resulted re-sulted from the Department of Agriculture Year Book for 1925, which was based on reports from 1,337 farm families. Commenting on this, the Los Angeles Times says: "If these figures are true, they sweep away at one movement some nine-tenths of the arguments for farm relief measures, for such figures evidently are worthless as a basis for anything. They could be used only for the wildest guess work. "It appears then that there is no reliable statistical information regarding the condition of the American farmer- save the general price index which is concededly only an approximation. This general gen-eral index shows that in the last few months farm products have practically caught up with the price levels of other commodities." There is a movement on in Congress right now to apply the quota law to farm labor coming into this country from Mexico for seasonable work, which returns home after the crops are harvested. This common labor from Mexico is invaluable to large farming areas in the United States, and has not heretofore been exclded. Will this Mexican labor be considered as a "real" farm problem, prob-lem, or will politics be played so as to deny the farmer this mainstay of agriculture in the Southwest? |