OCR Text |
Show A Farmer and the Red Points A farmer came into my office the other day and in transacting a little business pulled out his purse and separated money from knicknacks, laying to one side about a dozen of the little red tokens the change on red points. I said, "Well, certainly you have plenty of red points. . . . don't you eat?" "Mister," he said, "I live off the farm; my wife and I are not grocerry store addicts. We have our own veal, our own beef, our own pork. We have our own poultry and cows, hence plenty of eggs, milk, and butter. Red points don't bother me. As farmers farm-ers we raise what we want, buying very little. It is as a farmer should. If a farmer is working his-farm right, he traipses but few times to a store." "A properly managed farm should provide almost al-most all of the farmer's living." In further talk with that man of the soil, I was in-' in-' formed that his wife puts up, canned or bottled meat in large quantities; a cellar full of vegetables; wool blankets from the fleeces of his own sheep; meats as wanted, culling out; plenty of milk, butter and good cheese, and a gangly fryer when the skillet is hot. He or she go to the grocery store so seldom that on appearance the salesman shakes hands with 'em, and says, "Glad to see yuh back - -.Didja have a good time?" He gave me quite a little preachment. His politics poli-tics are against the New Deal, even with its farm subsidies. He sees through the artificial lifting of first wages high, then agriculture high, then wages high, then ag. high, like putting weights on first one side of a steelyard, and then the other, complaining that they wont balance, and squawking all the time. He wants no favors and expects none. He doesn't want anybody to tinker with him or his farm. He says his farm is quite a good "production effort," as good even as a high price job in a munition factory. He says that for himself, he can't afford to gad off to get that lure of high pay, only to neglect the farm. More earned sitting tight on the dob of dirt and giving giv-ing it his all. He is a pretty level readed guy all around, that blokie is. And in this, exactly right, in my opinion. The farm is the best, most independent form of getting a living known; subject to fewer artificialities; artificiali-ties; and is a respectable way of being very independent. inde-pendent. And best of all, his checks don't bounce. |