OCR Text |
Show Future Prosperity of U. S. Depends on Sound Postwar Planning Historically, America's economy nad its beginnings in farms and in small towns. As more goods were produced and as farms multiplied, more towns came into being and some of them grew into large cities. The existence of the large cities docs not, however, detract from the importance of rural communities. About one-fourth of our people are farmers and dependent upon the production from their land for nearly near-ly all their income. Roughly, an other fourth, living in small towns and to some extent in the cities, depend de-pend on farm trade in one form or another for a livelihood. These two groups represent at least one-half our population. The importance of prosperity in rural America to the rest of the economy is indicated by the fact that approximately 70 cents of the farm dollar goes into the purchase of things which have to be manufactured. manu-factured. The farmer's prosperity, j therefore, makes a maximum contribution con-tribution toward the creation of payrolls pay-rolls and jobs. Sound postwar planning should result re-sult not only in more jobs in your community but in permanent advances ad-vances for tiin United States. In a democracy, progressive community action is essential to social and economic eco-nomic progress. From "Postwar Jobs and Growth in Small Communities," Commu-nities," Committee for Economic Development De-velopment handbook |