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Show Ist'g Faso Facts Intelligent Defense Required to Maintain Parity Price Standard By BARROW LYONS WNU Staff Correspondent WASHINGTON, D. C Anyone who thinks that we can have perpetual prosperity without HniiwA til .li J cooperative plan, mng for it, more than we have in the past. is dreaming. I come back to the proposal pro-posal I made last week: we must adopt a concept of parity income, which includes all segments of our economic life, Barrow Lyons and 61,6 a wa t0 balance the distribution dis-tribution of national income so that all can prosper, if we wish to prosper pros-per ourselves. This is not the Golden Gold-en Rule, but a hard-headed, practical prac-tical concept of our modern economy. Let us test this against the con-cept con-cept of parity prices which has become be-come a symbol of justice to the farmer. Parity prices are attained when a given amount of farm produce say a bushel of corn will bring to the farmer enough money to buy the same things that a bushel of corn would enable him to buy in the five-year period 1909-1914. Parity price does not guarantee a good crop or a good demand for the crop. It merely guarantees the purchasing power of the farmer's I dollar. . When the war ends and millions of war workers lose their jobs making mak-ing planes, tanks, guns and ships and millions of service men begin to seek new jobs mass purchasing power will depend upon how much employment there is. In all probability proba-bility not only will industrial workers work-ers have less to spend when war savings are exhausted, but many who live in small towns and suburbs sub-urbs will begin to raise chickens, fruit and vegetables for themselves. At the very best, it will be difficult diffi-cult to maintain as large a market for agricultural products as we now have, unless important new uses for them are developed, and world trade is expanded greatly. It will also be difficult to maintain parity prices, for there are no commodities commodi-ties so sensitive to a declining purchasing power. Even in the immediate future, it looks as though farming would be somewhat less profitable, for prices of nearly everything the farmer buys are rising. And if price controls con-trols are weakened, most of the things the farmer buys will cost a lot more. There is a feeling abroad that with permanent prosperity just around the corner, all production quotas on farm products should be left off after the war man's nature to produce should not be inhibited in-hibited by artificial restraints. But if all quotas were abolished and the government were to make commodity com-modity loans to protect parity prices on everything the farmer wished to raise, he would very quickly raise a good deal more than he could sell in this country. Two-Price System? The farm organizations say a two-price two-price system will solve that problem. prob-lem. Keep prices at home up to parity, find new uses for farm products, and sell what is left abroad at whatever we can get for it. But here the doctors differ. Some would have the government take the loss, when produce is exported at a loss. The Grange suggests that the farmer take the loss on products sold abroad at less than cost. That would be the check against raising too much. Such a scheme might be worth trying in one or two exportable export-able commodities. However, even this device might not bring about sufficient control of production to maintain parity, for many . farmers have a tendency to plant more acres to increase income, in-come, as soon- as price declines and thereby cut their own throats by creating an unmarketable surplus. sur-plus. The many small and poorly financed fi-nanced farmers, who are hard to control, also create a market problem prob-lem for the better financed farmers as soon as prices begin to drop. In relation to commodities like wheat, which in the 1930s developed unmanageable world surpluses, international production control may be necessary, although extremely ex-tremely difficult to bring about. Of course, the best way to preserve pre-serve a profitable market for farm products is to preserve the purchasing purchas-ing power of the great masses of people who are not farmers. Farmers Farm-ers should never forget that they are a declining proportion of the population. popu-lation. Only 30 years ago farmers constituted more than one-third of i the population. Today they are : scarcely more than one-fifth. As efficiency of agriculture increases, in-creases, the proportion of farmers to the total population will continue to decline. Elimination of several million sub-marginal farms may accelerate ac-celerate this. When we can agree upon a fair distribution of national income, and set up economic controls that will bring about an approximately just distribution, then for the first time we shall begin fully to enjoy the advantages which modern science and engineering make possible foi all people. Until then we shall havr wars and political upheaval. |