OCR Text |
Show I fywg Released by Western Newspaper Union. A REAL FARMER I1AS 'A WAY OF LIFE' The late Frank O. Lowden, one time governor of Illinois, was a business busi-ness farmer. His measure of success suc-cess was the cash dividends he could pay on the investment he had in his hundreds of Illinois acres and the buildings and equipment of the farm plant That measuring stick ol cash dividends is also used in measuring meas-uring the success of the Pullman Car company, the cash dividends it can pay to its stockholders. Frank Lowden was first of all a businessman, business-man, and to him farming was a business venture, He was typical of the large farm operators throughout the nation. They, too, farm as a business and count cash dividends as their measure of success. Not far removed from the Lowden Low-den acres in northern Illinois is the modest 160-acre farm of Georga Wermact He farms, not as a business, busi-ness, but as a way of life. He farms because he likes the farm way oi living. He derives a pleasure from helping to make things grow. He likes the gamble offered by each season's weather conditions, and solving the problems such conditions offer. He likes being his own master, mas-ter, the architect and engineer of his own career. He especially appreciates appre-ciates the insurance his acres provide pro-vide for himself and family, an insurance in-surance of food, shelter and fuel. He knows there will be potatoes In the cellar bin, meat on the hoof whenever it is needed, milk and butter but-ter to be had for the taking, eggs in the henhouse, and trees in the wood lot that will provide fuel. He look9 at all of those things, not at cash dividends, as his measure of success. suc-cess. He farms because he likes farming as a way of life. George Wermact, far more than was Governor Lowden, is the typical typi-cal American farmer, and may he continue to be all of that as an exponent of an American way of life. He is to agriculture what the small one-man owned and operated plant is to industry. S $ 3 MODEL FAMILY FOR AMERICA If Theodore Roosevelt were still alive he would point to the family of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney J. Bour-goyne Bour-goyne of Philadelphia as among the models for America. At the time of the recent celebration of their golden wedding, the family was enumerated as: Mr. and Mrs. Bourgoyne, two daughters, nine sons, two sons-in-law, eight daughters-in-law, 22 grandchildren grandchil-dren and one great grandchild. Sidney Bourgoyne is known in the big cities and the small towns from coast-to-coast as the "helpful "help-ful smile man." He has reason to smile. U. S. BUREAUS HAVE MANY DIFFICULT RULES WHEN I WAS A BOY some of the farmers around the . village in which I lived raised sugar cane. They sold their product to a small plant in the village engaged in making cane syrup. Those farmers would probably have stopped raising rais-ing sugar cane had they had to interpret and comply with present bureaucratic OPA rules in determining deter-mining the price they were ,to charge. After several pages of preamble pre-amble the OPA rule as to price gets down to this: ."The producer (the farmer) is therefore entitled to only that part of 4.5 cents which is equal to the portion that the net contents of the case, 312 ounces, bears to 5 gallons, 640 ounces." In the end the farmer is given this problem: prob-lem: "Multiply .4875 by 4.5 (.4875 x 4.5 2.19375) and get the sum of 2.1938." I have not yet discovered discov-ered whether or not that 2.1938 told the farmer what he is to charge, or for how much of his sugar cane. It all represents one of the countless count-less funny rules the bureaucrats make for our guidance. AMERICA FURNISHES MANPOWER IN THIS WAR IN THE FIGHT TO BREAK the Sigfried line in Germany there were in the Allied forces one Canadian, one British, one French and five American armies, including the air borne force. The claim was made by our Allies in World War I that America did not do a full share of the fighting, that we provided funds more than men. In World War II we certainly provided funds, but it is also quite evident that we have provided a full share of battle front man power. America and Russia Rus-sia did the heavy work of the past three 'years. We will also do the major part in the rehabilitation of Europe. WE OF THE OLDER generation will remember the terrific national howl we set up over the first "bil lion dollar congress." We consid ered such expenditures outrageous. Today the interest charge on the na tional debt amounts each year u more than seven times the appro priations of that "billion dollar con gress." and that is a small item to day. Now we would welcome a "ONE billion dollar congress." THE PROBLEMS OF peace will not be easily solved. |