Show FARM ACT PROPOSES elimination OF SURPLUSES in the corn belt great piles of corn are rotting in the mud then delv daiv ir athan ban a hundred miles away ir y aged men and women are ei ebing i ing in bread lines A great dairy farm not more than sixty miles from new york Is pouring skim milk down Us its sewers while in new york city school children faint from hunger at their desks not only last year but for many years past part of the nations apple crop went back to earth yet thousands ot of persons who wanted those apples get them Is there then such a thing as a surplus of farm arm products when people are going hungry in town that is a hard bard question it cannot be answered in theory the tact fact is that surpluses do exist they exist side by side with bread lines they add to these breadlines bread lines they turn the results of human effort into economic waste the domestic consumption of 0 food has not declined very much in ono one way or another people are being fed the fact is that it if beginning today you could restore completely the usual domestic consumption ot of lood food products there would still be an surplus ot of certain basic commodities modi ties the tact fact is that these surpluses have been in the making for or more than a decade they pound down prices slash the farmers buying power cause farmers to buy less from cities and in the end add to city unemployment crop surp surpluses fuses have had as disastrous an effect upon national as crop shortages used to have on the isolated communities ot of f a simpler age the new farm act does not condone this tact fact it seeks to help farmers correct it it is not cot however an idealistic solution it does not attempt the impossible it tackles the reality exactly as it exists in our complex social and economic structure it recognizes that farmers cannot buy from industry until prices of farm commodities go up it recognizes frankly that prices cannot go u p the face of surpluses aluse s that is why the farm act provides machinery to attack the surplus to ignore these surpluses would mean that farmers would go on producing tor for a market that exist there is no profit in that it would only perpetuate the present condition in which the farmer finds that it takes twice as much of his produce to buy a given quantity of industrial goods as it did in that fair exchange period 1909 1914 not an idealistic solution but a practicable one the new farm act presents an all opportunity to break the present vicious circle that leads from surpluses to breadlines bread lines it gives the nation the machinery to use in bringing some measure of order to production leading to improved farm prices farmers buying more from cities and men going back to work in industrial plants |