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Show Farmers And Laborers We have - called attention, time and time again, to the apparent ap-parent relationship which exists between the income of laborers and the income of farmers. Figures Fig-ures recently released seem to indicate in-dicate that there is a tendency for these sums to be equal. Along this line, we call attention at-tention to a recent address by Louis J. Taber, Master of the National Grange, in which he suggested that it is more than a coincident that, while the farmer's farm-er's dollar is twenty-two per cent below par, "approximately twenty per cent, of the nation's labor is unemployed." Mr. Taber is of the opinion that the nation has not solved the farm problem and he considers it one of the great unanswered steps towards recovery. In the last decade, de-cade, he says, the prices received by farmers were equal to only seventy-eight per cent, of the prices they paid for commodities goods and services used in rural life. Mr. Tabor thinks that "A-merica's "A-merica's greatest need is economic balance." He insists that our national na-tional depression will continue until labor and industry meet agriculture ag-riculture in solving the problem created by the disparity -in farm income as compared with other activities in the United States The views of Mr. Taber appear to be in agreement with. those of Edward A. O'Neal, president of the "Amercian Farm Bureau Federation Fed-eration who asserts that our democracy dem-ocracy "is going to fall down unless un-less through voluntary action by the groups, in cooperation with the Federal Government, we achieve a fairer economic balance." bal-ance." Mr. O'Neal says that agriculture agricul-ture is supplying the other elements ele-ments of our economy with plentiful supplies of food and fiber fib-er and adds that "in effect agriculture ag-riculture (through the Agricultural Agricul-tural Adjustment Act) has set its house in order, but it cannot solve the problem alone." The question of balance was recognized re-cognized at the Kansas Farm Bureau Bu-reau Convention where delegates adopted a resolution calling for a balance among agriculture, industry indus-try and labor. The farm delegates asserted that until wage levels and industrial prices are bought more nearly in line with farm prices, the parity payments of the AAA should not only be retained ut be increased. While there is a disposition in some quarters of the United States to decry the efforts of the Government to aid the nation's farmers, it is encouraging to report re-port that, on the other hand, industrial in-dustrial voices are being raised occasionally in defence of the practice. Certainly considerable thought has been given to the subject of agriculture's welfare in : he last few years. More and more he people of the United States '!' I'-t-innir.;' to understand that : aLona! prosperity cannot be permanent per-manent unless and until the mil-' ens of people who depend upon agriculture for their living have a just share of the national income. in-come. This is a great gain. In time it will bear fruit. |