REBELLION QUELLED

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 31, 5 August 1933, Page 11

REBELLION QUELLED

POLICY OF INFLATION

FARMING IN AMERICA

RAIN OF FEDERAL GOLD

(From "The Post's" Representative) NEW YORK," July 5. ■ ■By a'Stroke of the pen, President Roosevelt scotched the farmers' rebeliion when he signed legislation, feverishly rushed through Congress at his direction, on the eve of a, nationwide march on tho Capitol. Such legislation hurls £700,000,000 of Federal Reserve gold into the maolstrom to bolster prices of primary productsj to a point at which tho farm may once j more make ends meet. The revolt had its genesis in lowa, which shed its Republican'tutelage for; the first time in the history of the State. The "Grand Old Party." hail been virtually "split in lowa by the other Roosevelt in 1912. War inter- j veneel, with its four and a half years of boom prices in the Middle AVost cornfields. Depression really began there in 1920, when prices were gradually being reduced in the direction of normalcy. It culminated in 1932 witJi the creation of the Farmers' Holiday Association; farmers forcibly resisting official tests of their cattle; seizing sheriffs as, they held mortgage foreclosure gales; picketing of rural highways to prevent farm and dairy products and cattle from reaching market; using primitive weapons against soldiers of the National Guard. Finally came the crowning act of lawlessness; farmers dragged a Judge from the Bench and maltreated him. Then the countryside was placed under martial la w. CRAZY SPECULATION. The farmer is partly to blame for his troubles. He made little, if any, provision for readjusting his economic outlook after the war. He indulged in land speculation even before he took pact in the national orgy of gambling on the stock market. Believing that war prices would last forever, farmers j jiaid fantastic rates, up to £150 an! acre, for land. Alwa3's land-hungry, they bought additional acreage, and mortgaged their existing holdings, at inflated values, to get what land they coveted. A time came when farms could not be sold for anything like enough to cover a mortgage. Possession of land, believed to be best in the world for growing corn, became a liability, rather lhan an asset. The embittered farmer describes as absurd and obsolete a taxation system which lays the entire burden on real property. Once proudly

acclaimed the backbone of the nation, lie and his k'iud are driven into default and eviction. The American farmer lias never presented a united front in fighting his battles. He is riven apart into three more or less hostile organisations: the Farm Bureau, the Farmers' Union, and the National Grange. The : Farmers' Union is radical; the others are conservative. Out.of.the Farmers' Union grew the Farmers' Holiday Association, whose objective's are moratorium and prevention of eviction. The new State Government in lowa, on the day after its election, commissioned experts in Washington to study the whole economic and financial structure of the State. The President camo to the.farmers' aid with his farm relief plan and other palliatives. Prices have already begun to turn upward as inflation proceeds. But the country had a close shave. It is ono thing for the wastrel and the lounger to revolt at the behest of his Communist masters'; it is quite another thing for the honest, hard-working tiller of tho soil to set out to undermine the foundations of law and order which he hini.self erected by paticnf, unremitting toil and sacrifice. . I