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Show Farm Prospects Bright Despite War Restrictions Experts See Co-operative Solution to Farm Labor Problem; Shortage of Tools Greatest Headache. By BAUKHAGE Ncivs Analyst and Commentator. WNU Service, 1343 H Street, N-W, Washington, D. C. As Washington takes a look ahead across the fields and pastures and dairy farms of the nation, the prospects pros-pects for the farmer seem pretty good. He is going to have some tough problems but they aren't insoluble. in-soluble. And there are good times ahead. The ceilings on retail prices still leave room for price rises which will turn to the farmer's advantage. Congress has yet to decide whether wheth-er the point at which the ceiling on farm prices is to begin can be lowered low-ered to parity or whether it will be held at 110 as the law now holds. Price Administrator Henderson Is firm for the lower figure. Secretary Secre-tary of Agriculture Wickard has endorsed en-dorsed this view which the President Presi-dent set forth In his fireside chat. But congress will decide. Meanwhile, behind eltsed doors the problem will be threshed out as to methods to be used when the lowered low-ered retail prices roll back through the processor right up to the barn gate. by the Federal Land banks as the amount which can be used in the future to apply to their long-term Installment loans. Every farm over a series of years has its "rainy days" in which income falls below normal or in which the farm family has reverses of one kind or another. These rainy day funds are bound to prove helpful in many ways, and, as President Roosevelt said, those who comply with the suggestions for paying pay-ing off debts and curtailment of installment in-stallment buying "will be grateful that they have done so when this war is over." When A. G. Black, governor of the Farm Credit administration, saw that this year's crops were going go-ing to bring more money in than they have for many years he began selling this "rainy day" idea to the borrowers. They were sold to the tune of $5,000,000. Some farmers have already paid up four or five I years' installments on their long- term loans. They will be sitting pretty if rainy days come. "Farmers "Farm-ers sometime wonder," says Governor Gov-ernor Black, "whether, in these days This will be the point where the department of agriculture steps in with its technical knowledge and experience ex-perience to supplement and probably proba-bly to modify some of Mr. Henderson's Hender-son's ideas. For one thing cannot be forgotten: the farm products of the nation have still to be changed over to some extent from the things that are not essential to the war effort ef-fort to the things that are essential to the war effort. This cannot all be done by the waving of a big stick; there must be left for the farmer a certain price motive for this changeover change-over on his part. And how to keep prices up for the products needed and down for what isn't, is a complicated com-plicated problem which cannot be settled entirely by an arbitrary system sys-tem of retail price controls in a market mar-ket of increased demand and limited limit-ed supply. I,-. hardship which the farmer ""-s rvith the rest of the tpro- in which they are being urged to buy war bonds as a patriotic duty, they should lay aside funds with the Federal Fed-eral Land banks with which to meet their own private debts. Well, remember re-member that the Federal Land banks invest the funds received from future payments in government securities. se-curities. The farmers realize that they are accomplishing not one but two things in placing their cash in the future payment fund they provide pro-vide for their own security and stop payment of interest on that part of their loan equal to the funds deposited. de-posited. They have the assurance that the money in the interim will be working for Uncle Sam. "Buy bonds of course," says Governor Gov-ernor Black, "but also reduce your farm mortgage indebtedness while you have an opportunity." And that is just what the farmer is doing. i . ' I . t 'V practice call. ""wf That iS Die thing "tfiiu' ' "f'ausing " the most headaches in Washington right now. There is the question of farm machinery; ma-chinery; of fertilizers and sprays, of transportation from the farm to the primary market, from there to the processor and finally into distribution. dis-tribution. v And another bottleneck which backs right up to the barn and the sty is the lack of processing facilities. facili-ties. I understand that if the pig crop now in the making proceeds at the present rate there will not be enough square feet of killing space in America to handle the hogs when they come in. Some of you will recall that in 1924 embargoes had to .be placed on certain slaughterhouses to keep the pigs from piling up at their doors. However, there is more experience experi-ence stored up in Washington heads than there was then and greater ability, equipment and incentive to make use of it. One thing that is being done is to get the farmers to begin feeding their hogs earlier so that the peak period of slaughter can be flattened out and all the. pigs won't come to market at once. Experts who have studied the situation situ-ation say that the farm labor problem prob-lem is by no means insoluble. It exists but it is going to be licked with the help of women, school children chil-dren and part-time help from men in the small towns in rural communities commu-nities who are willing to close up shop and help with the peak load at harvest time. This has already been done in some communities fruit picking, for instance. On the whole, the prospects are that the farmer will be much better off than he was after the last war. Then he took his extra money, made down payments on more land, mortgaged mort-gaged what he had to buy still more and when the depression came lost everything. There are no signs of a land-buying boom now. The farmer, farm-er, once bitten is twice shy, he has begun to lay away this extra cash for the rainy day that he, of all people, knows is coming. Farmers have already made rainy day payments to the tune of $5,000,-000. $5,000,-000. This is the amount reported samite --'i'V4't wr,T Concepts of War How does it feel to register for the second time? When the men from 45 to 65, especially espe-cially those near enough the top of the bracket to have served in the first World war, went to the school house and signed their registration card, they did it with quite a flourish. flour-ish. Of course they knew they would probably never be called for military mili-tary service but just the same it gave them a sort of a "we did it before we can do it again" feeling. They felt, if the feelings of one of them who is making these observations observa-tions are typical, as if there was quite a lot of fight in the old dog still. But any one of them who paused to reflect a moment must have realized real-ized what a wholly different attitude atti-tude many of the boys of 1942 have compared with the draftees or the men who enlisted in 1917. A quarter quar-ter of a century ago America had only the quaintest conception of war. It was based chiefly on romance. It had little or nothing to do with the experiences soldiers in previous wars had encountered, still less of the experiences they themselves were to encounter, such as for instance in-stance trench warfare under sustained sus-tained bombardment or aerial attack. at-tack. To the men of 1917 fighting a war was, besides being a patriotic duty, more or less of a sporting thing. But the writings and the teachings of the last 20 years have served to root out the idea that war is a chivalrous thing. To many of the modern generation it seems contemptible con-temptible and patriotism doesn't appear ap-pear to be involved. There is one thing that many people peo-ple fail to understand. One has to live through war conditions to understand un-derstand war. This understanding makes it possible, paradoxical though it may seem, for a normal person to adjust himself to the utterly ut-terly abnormal conditions about him. To live under a code contrary con-trary to that which he has been taught; to bear up under discomfort, discom-fort, delay, suffering and danger. This factor evolves from a crowd psychology which produces a mass patience, self-reliance, courage and self-sacrifice. |