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Show WELFARE OF SMALL FARMER Salvation Depends Upon His Ability to Compete With Large Farmer or Farming Corporation, One of the most important of all economic problems is the preservation of the prosperity of the small farmer, who does most of hU own work on his farm. His salvation depends upon his ability to compete with the large farmer or the farming corporation, writes Thomas Nixon Carver In Utah Farmer. Aside from the question of securing credit, two things threaten to place him under a handicap and to give the larger farmer an advantage over him In competition. If these two things are allowed to operate, the big farmer will beat him In competition and force him down to a lower standard stand-ard of living and possibly to extinc-1 extinc-1 tion. ! One thing which would tend in that direction Is a large supply of cheap labor. The small farmer now has an advantage because of the difficulty which the big farmer has In getting help. So great is this difficulty that many of the bonanza farmers are giving giv-ing up the fight and selling out to small farmers. If we can keep conditions con-ditions such that the capitalistic farmer has great difficulty in getting help, the small farmer will continue to beat him in competition, and the bonanza farm will continue to give way to the one-family farm. One thing which threatens the prosperity pros-perity and even the existence of the small farmer is the handicap under which he finds himself in buying and selling. The big farmer 'who can buy and sell in large quantities and also employ expert talent in buying and selling, and in securing credit, has an advantage over the small farmer who must buy and sell in small quantities and give his time and attention to the growing of crops rather than to selling sell-ing them. Much' of the supposed economy of large-scale production even in merchandising and manufacturing, manu-facturing, is found, upon examination, to consist wholly in an advantage in bargaining that is, in buying and selling. When it comes to the work of growing farm crops, as distinct from selling them and buying raw materials, the one-family farm is the most efficient unit that has yet been found. But the big farmer can beat the in-, in-, dividual small farmer In buying and 1 selling. It would seem desirable, from the standpoint of national efficiency, effi-ciency, to preserve the small farm as the productive unit, but to organize a number of small farms into -larger units for buying and selling. Thus we should have the most efficient units both in producing and in buying and selling. |
