| Show elimination val NATION OF SURPLUSES IS AIM al OF NEW FARM ACT in the corn belt great pit piles of corn a rn are rotting in the mud then driving less than a hundred miles away discouraged d men mail and women are aie shuttling shuffling in breadlines bread lines A great dairy farm arm not more than sixty miles from now new york la is pouring skim milk down its sowers bowers while in new york city school children faint from hunger at their desks not only last year but for or many years past part ot of the nations apple crop went back to earth yet thousands ot of persons who wanted those apples get them la Is there then such a thin thing 9 oa as a surplus ot of farm products when people are going hungry in town that Is a hard question it cannot be answered in theory I 1 the tact fact Is that surpluses do exist they exist side aide by side with breadlines bread broad lines they add to these bread lines they turn the results of human effort into economic waste the domestic consumption ot at food has bas not declined very much in one way or another people are bo be ing fed I 1 the tact fact Is that it beginning to could restore completely the usual domestic consumption ot at food products iro ducts there would still be I 1 an surplus ot of certain baslo basic commodities I 1 the fact Is that these surpluses have bave been in the making for more than a a decade they pound down prices slash jho the farmers buying power cause farmers to buy less from cities and in the end add to city unemployment crop surpluses have had as disastrous as arous trous an effect upon national well being as crop shortages used to have on the isolated com comment munt aies of a simpler age the new farm act does not condone this tact it seeks to help tanners farmers correct it it la is not however an idealistic solution it abea does not attempt the impossible it t tackles the reality exactly as it t exists in our complex social and economic structure it recognizes that farmers canot banot buy from indus ry until prices of farm commodo les ies go up it recognizes fran frankly lily hat prices cannot go 90 up in ane ace of surpluses that is why the farm act provides ina machinery chinery to attack the surplus f to ignore these surpluses would dinean that farmers would go on producing for a market that does not exist there Is no profit in that it would only perpetuate the te present condition in which th the 0 tanner farmer finds that it takes twice as all much chuch of his produce to buy a given quantity of industrial goods as it did in that fair exchange period 1909 1914 not an idealistic co lution but a practicable one the new farm act presents an opportunity to break the present vicious circle that thai leads from surpluses to breadlines bread lines it gives the nation the machinery to use in bringing some soma measure of order to production leading to improved farm prices farmers buying more from cities and men going back to work in industrial plants |
