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Show General Seeks to Relieve Drain Upon Farm Labor Urges Draft Boards to Consider Deferments; Lack of Boats Limits Shipments Of Foodstuffs to England. By BAUKHAGE National Farm and Home Hour Commentator. WASHINGTON. You would be surprised at the people in Washington Washing-ton who are worrying over the farmer's farm-er's worries which have been increased in-creased by the emergency. The chief worries are two: The drain of farm labor caused by the draft and the demands of the defense industries; in-dustries; the inability, because of defense priorities, to get the labor- ) saving devices which the farmer 1 needs to replace human hands. In a top-floor office of a converted convert-ed apartment house overlooking the Potomac. I found a sandy-haired Hoosier who is doing some of that worrying. He is concerned with the problem of "maintaining an adequate ade-quate supply of farm workers for production of essential foods required re-quired for national defense." He did not write those words just quoted. Secretary of Agriculture Wickard wrote them. The sandy-haired sandy-haired gentleman is not even in the department of agriculture. He is a general in the army. What is more he Is had of the organization which has been drawing "heavily upon the supply of farm labor." He is Brig. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, acting director di-rector of the Selective Service system. sys-tem. But that is only half the story. Lewis Hershey is farm-born and larm-bred and although his official duties are concerned only with the selective service, he is unofficially -::.A worker before they accept him for military service." When Lewis Hershey talks about trying to replace a man on the farm he knows what he is talking about. He still owns a farm his share of what is left of his Mennonite grandfather's grand-father's original 360 acres in Steuben Steu-ben county, Indiana. Grandfather Hershey came to Steuben county from Pennsylvania whither his ancestors had immigrated immigrat-ed from Switzerland in 1708. Twelve hundred men out of Steuben Steu-ben county, Indiana, left the plow to go to the Civil war. One out of six came back to the farm. It was natural nat-ural that young Lewis Hershey, back in 1911 joined the national guard. You may remember the national guard went to the Mexican border in 1916 and it was only a jump from there to France. That jump took young Lieutenant Hershey away from the farm but his roots are still there and he still talks the language. He knows the farm is a vital part of our defense. Food for England Waits at Docks Another problem of the emergency emergen-cy is feeding the British. There was some consternation expressed ex-pressed in the department of agriculture agri-culture when it was learned that the first food ship from the United States under the lend-lease law did not ar-' ar-' rive in Britain until almost three months after the bill had been passed. Reports from London reflected re-flected this surprise, too. It was suggested there that perhaps the United States might institute cheese-less cheese-less and creamless days in order that Britain might be supplied. The ship carried 4,000,000 shell eggs, 120,000 pounds of cheese and 1,000 tons of flour. This seemed a drop in the British food bucket. But the records now reveal that the department of agriculture had $70,000,000 worth of food on or near the docks and has had ever since shortly after the lend-lease act became be-came a law. The trouble has been lack of ships. There has been some surprise, too, over the fact that shell-eggs, which might be considered almost as perishable per-ishable as shells, were sent instead of powdered eggs. Lord Woolton, food minister, who met the ship, tasted the cheese when it arrived and said it was quite as good as the English cheddar. He did not taste the eggs and some folks wondered for they were NOT shipped cold storage. Radio Artist Works His Own Farm Information grows in the strangest strang-est places in Washington. The other day I learned a lot about moles and how to feed yourself from your own farm from Bud Ward. Of course, the information did not cover sugar and coffee growing, nor, in this case, meat, though Bud tells me he will have plenty of pork by spring besides what he is going to sell. I forgot to say who Bud is. Well, I will tell you later. He has a farm over in Virginit. It's the kind of a place that people stop to looH at when they are out driving. Bud does all the work with the help of Mrs. Ward and the baby, Amelita. She is not a baby any more, the way I first knew her. Now she is a young lady and pretty enough to make any star of stage or screen or radio envious. Bud says the family had a surplus of fruit and vegetable and chicken to put up over 500 cans that is glass jars of food last year. "Sometime," Bud told me the other oth-er day, "we put up 25 or 30 cans in the evening, after we get home from the studo." And that reminds me. I was going go-ing to tell you who Bud is. Well, he and Mrs. Ward and Amelita run one of the most popular weekly programs pro-grams in Washington. In fact they have two, and one annual, international interna-tional blue network show, "Congressional "Congres-sional Children." The "National Children's" program pro-gram is weekly and it consists of children and I mean children little tots some of them who can hardly talk. All three of the Wards have their part in running these programs. Oh, the moles! Well, I have to let that go until next time. GOVERNMENT PAYDAYS Twice a month 167,000 Washing-tonians Washing-tonians have money in their pockets on government paydays. A large number of these people who know that they will be pensioned at 60, or after 20 years' service, are affected af-fected the same way and the first thing they do is make for the bank. Some of them just deposit their checks. Others cash a goodly share of them. And then they make for the stores. You can imagine what happens to Washington's shopping district, j BRIG. GEN. HERSHEY familiar with the other problems which affect the farmer. The draft is his business and he has told draft boards all over the country to give "serious consideration considera-tion to individual claims of men engaged en-gaged in agricultural pursuits for occupational deferment from military mili-tary training." Farm Workers Important. "One reason why so many young fellows are in the army today Instead In-stead of working in the fields," said General Hershey to me, "is because even the farmers on the draft boards, when a husky lad comes along and says he is willing to join the army do not realize how hard it will be to replace him. "It is a lot easier to teach a young town boy the skills so he can replace a man taken away from the production produc-tion line in a factory than it is to teach him how to farm," said the general. "You can't just tell a green hand to hitch up the wagon and go down and get a load of corn. You know yourself that a farmer can do in z three hours what it takes a green hand 10 hours to do. "It's hard enough to keep the boys on the farm anyhow these days," the general went on. "They don't like to stick their noses into the hot side of a cow in July when they can get a job in a factory, work until five o'clock, and then get off and go to the movies. They soon get enough cash to make a down payment on a car and the first time they come home in it to see the folks they take two or three other young fellows from the neighborhood back with them." ' But somebody has to feed the fac tory workers and the soldiers. "We have got to have food," General Gen-eral Hershey concluded, "and the draft boards will have to learn to answer the question: Where can we get another man to replace the farm |