NEW FRONTIERS

Evening Post, Issue 25, 30 January 1935, Page 22

NEW FRONTIERS

PIONEERING IN U.S.A.

PRESIDENT'S PLANS

LAND TKAINING

"Pioneers, 0 pioneers!" were the ■words used by Walt Whitman in 0110 of hia poems dedicated to the frontiersmen' 6n tho North'American continent (writes M. Philips Price in the "Manchester Guardian")- In his day, whenever a man in the Eastern States of the "straight American stock" was dissatisfied with his wages or was unemployed lie had only to trek across the Appalachian trails to the plains where the buffalo and Indians.were withdrawing beforo the white pioneer farmer. The frontier was in continual retreat, while recent immigrants from Europe—mostly Latin and Slav—filled the places of tho pioneers as unskilled labour at bench and forge. Today all that is chnnged. And the trouble is that most Americans think in terms of conditions that have passed away. It is not for nothing that Secretary Wallace's new book is entitled "New Frontiers." For thinking men in the United States today are acutely conscious of tho fact that an epoch in the'history of a. continent is ended and that it rests with them to begin another. The unemployed in the Eastern cities can no longer find an outlet in tho Western prairies, where the existing farmers are struggling with low prices mortgages, and 1 bankruptcy. They have got to stay in the East and make the best of it. Yet a new frontier there is. ' ' ■ THE NEW PIONEERS. I was made aware of this when visiting some of the outlying districts of the States of Connecticut and Massachusetts. Motoring through the wooded valleys, all golden and orange with the glories of the North American autumn, one could see hero and there, now in colonies, now singly, the encampments and bungalows of the twentieth-century North American pioneers. They had no prairie wagons, they had no buffaloes around them or hostile Indians. As a matter of fact I saw three families of Indians iii a valley, but they dressed like everyone else, farmed like the rest,.chewed gum, spat, and talked like their white brethren. ' These new pioneers were men who were tired of~seoing their life's savings shrink in Wall Street panics and of waiting for opportunities which never came. So they had left the industrial centres and taken to the woods in tneliteral sense. They had' got cheap plots of land, cleared tho ground, and are growing maize and vegetables, dairying, and keeping poultry. Most of them seem to be doing well enough— at least to keep themselves for the winter. They are certainly no worse off than before, and they havo work and self-respect. But success is only coming to those who have the land sense.' I visited one young man, the son of a formerly wealthy stockbroker, who lost everything in Wall Street. He was making good with a dairy farm in a remote and beautiful yalley near the old-fashioned to.wn of Litchfield, where Harriet' Beecher Stowe onee lived and worked. MARKETING DIFFICULTIES. In New England, as elsewhere, the development of agriculture is dependent on improved marketing, and if there is to be any land settlement on a scale to meet the position wholesale prices must be raised without burdening the consumer. A beginning has been made under the New Deal to organise the marketing of milk. But tho vastness of the coutnry makes anything like our Milk Marketing Act impossible. Attempts havo been made by local milk producers and co-opera-tives to negotiate prices with area distributors and the Department of Agriculturo has given the agreements semilegal sanction. I say semi-legal, because the reformers had not gone far before they came up against the Constitution of the United States. It appears that the Federal Government may only legalise milk prices if the milk in question passes from one State to another; but only tho State in question <sari legalise the1 price if it remains within its boundary. So one can imagine a Republican State taking great delight in torpedoing .the price of interstate milk in process of being regulated by Democratic Washington. But if our American. <jousins have their difficulties in organised marketing—and any State regulation is anathema to the old pioneer spirit—they are far ahead of us in practical veterinary work and in their herds' general health. Large tracts of New England are clear of 'bovine tuberculosis, and this has been brought about by systematic clean-ups, area by area, by adequate veterinary staffs provided by the States and with part compensation paid to the farmer for reactors. These facts make ono aware how far behind Britain is in this respect. TRAINING DAMPS. The above Temarks refer to /those types of people who either havo some land training or have some natural sense for farming. Is anything "being dono to give those town youths who have nothing to do in the Eastern cities, and for whom the Western-prair-ies are now closed because there are no openings there, an opportunity to make good on the land in the East? The outlet may bo limited, because the soil of New England is rocky and the best, land already occupied, but markets are close at hand and intensive agriculture can perform wonders in these days. ; The President has done something, which may have effect in time in training young men to rural.pursuits. Scattered all over .the land are the Civil Conservation. Camps. Here young unemployed are given a, chance to sign on for six months, are fed. and housed in wooden buildings, and in return for this and a small cash, wage are taught to plant trees, do woodland ,work, drainage, and work of other public utility. My impression is that these camps are successful. The President has decided to continue them. , ; ...,

But the President is being assailed on all sides for wasting the nation's money, running up debt and threatening the Budget balance. I have been struck with the fear which any kind of Government' spending ' arouses in the mind of the, average. American. For him the Government is there as a policeBian, The old pioneer resents the Government doing anything which he.once did, even if he is no longer able,to do it alone. This is, the trouble in the United States today. A new outlook is needed and is only slowly being born. I have foun(J intelligent Americans unable to understand that spending on public works of national importance need not bo put in the samo category as expenditure on unemployment relief. Yet the one isp an investment on capital account and the other expenditure against revenue. The opponents of the President lump these items all together and I do not think even nil the Democrats see the difference. The American mind cannot easily appreciate that the State can own and work national resources. Up to now that has always been left to Wall Street. Tot here is one of the New Frontiers which are asking for pioneer work.