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Show I' SWEAT OR STARVE M A general food shortage would cap the 1 climax in the series' of stupidities with in which, as a people, we have burdened our- i ' selves since the armistice. And1 this is pro ',.?!' ' cisely what is cojning unless something f I like real statesmanship is invoked to f , avert it. :'' ' The conditions which foreshadow this ! i absurd and unnecessary calamity arc k- - t, plainly visible to all who still retain the ' JpV old fashioned notion that there is a rela- 1' . ft I . i;ion between cause and effect. The acre- f age of winter wheat has been cut down a third this year- Tens of thousands of 1 1 small farms have been abandoned. Thou- L : sands of truck gardeners and fruit grow- T'M x ers have been ruined by the antics of the ,:L , striking freight handlers in the ports and ' ''tjr t on the railorads. In certain sections of g'jk V the Corn Belt the feeding of cattle, hogs SjT and sheep for butchering has been cut . j ; down to a fifth of normal. And all over .; the country farmers are being forced to , ?',' : reduce their crop production this season - to the limit of what they can do without I j .'. ' hired help. I ;: . L ' All this is against the desire of the food R -4 ' producers. They would not shut down B js i their business except to avoid financial I w; - ' ruin- It is not the farmers fault that cit- i S, '" ies are absorbing the rural population. I i-f ! Nor can they be blamed for the .exagger- E j V,, ated industrial development which uses Hi: up the-supnlv. of labor. And, these two general causes are at the bottom of the W trouble. lis . During the war we were f requentlv re 1 minded that armies' advance on their stomachs. Within a year or so we shall r:- ,.' learn bv painful and. costly experience Hi , f.hnt cities do the svmo. The erocerv and m bakery are poor substitutes for the farm. Wt And it is the acme of idiocy to imagine 9i-i that the farmer will slave lone: hours in ," ,v order to furnish food at a loss to horde. K!$ , of people who won't do honest dav's work to in the great" industries, and yet who mnri- H ' ace to draw three times as much pay for m 6lackfnfoiv their iobs as the farmer gf-ts '' 1 If or sweating' on his- " "" i t... High pay, short hours and easy condi- SjLk f tions in industry will have to be accom- Wfc. panied by high production or these mil- ffi f lennial blessings will soon bje pinched off Wfl L 'by famine. Eft 9 A The President's Industrial Conference ii 1 - . ' ' ' i - in its valuable report devotes a couple of pregnant pages to a discussion of agriculture. agri-culture. Every city dweller should study this document and lay its lessons' to heart. Among other things the conference says "There is a broad national problem in the disparity of human effort applied to agriculture ag-riculture and that applied to general industry. in-dustry. If the conditions of labor and effort ef-fort in general industry are to be relaxed below the standards in "agriculture, it can only result in an increased burden on agriculture ag-riculture with a sequel of diminished agricultural ag-ricultural production." Translated into plain United States this means that we cannot go on much further furth-er if we demand sweat from the farmer and permit slacking by the mill and factory fac-tory employee. The farmer, being human will quit and "what will the birdies do then, poor things?" To quote again: "If under such dispar-. ity of effort general industry can still find an outlet for its commodities in ?k-port ?k-port trade, it means ultimately the de pendence of the United States on imported import-ed food. It means the upbuilding of large industrial-centers with all their train of human problems. From ,the standpoint of the physical and oral development of the people as a whole the conference believes be-lieves it would be a disaster.to exaggerate industrial development at the cost of agriculture." It is time for every thinking American to stop and look at the facts when this industrial in-dustrial conference warns us that our present economic and industrial set-up is leading us toward dependence on the outside out-side world for food. Could anything be more criminally absurd ab-surd and stupid, no nation in the world possesses more abundant or diversified form of resources than America. And yet following the lure of the gregarious instinct, in-stinct, we are actually shaping up to !'se our agricultural independence. . It is not too late to avert the threatened disaster. The first step in this direction is to stop aiding the slackers, and penalizing penaliz-ing the producers. The way t6 even up the "disparity" between city slacking ar.d country sweat is for public opinion to insist in-sist that every jnan pull his own weight in the boat. Then let us have machinery devised to put city folks in. cities and farmer folks on farms. There, are probably millions of people grinding aong in urban industries who are in the wrong place. If we can show them how, they will gladly go to the farms and become producers- Meanwhile only the most hopelessly optimistic op-timistic will expect hieh wages, low out put and dear commodities to be accompanied accom-panied by cheap and abundant food. Tha farmer is not in the .market for that kind of a gold brick. Leslie's Weekly. Getting 014 Out f Australia. Aoitralla forbids the export of geM without authority, but the . Chines ' ' who go back'tothelr'own'ISBd'on-a- vIMt show considerable Ingenuity la taking away the coreted sorerclgn. R-. cently customs Inspectors made a rich haul In a raisin jar, the back of a shsli)g mirror,, an alarm clock and the Irutlier band of a hat The Chinese rheerfully paid the Ones Imposed on them and were delighted when the coaftscatiid, gold un returned to them. |