AMERICAN FARMERS

Evening Star, Issue 18504, 11 December 1923, Page 7

AMERICAN FARMERS

INDUSTRY MUCH DEPRESSED. Press Association —By Telegraph—Copyright. WASHINGTON, December 9. The annual report of Mr H. C. Wallace (Secretary of Agriculture) the serious condition of ths farmers of the United States, who, it says, are faced with a 25 per cent, increase in taxation in three years and a rapidly disappearing foreign market, and who must radically alter their present methods of procedure. Mr Wallace declared that in fifteen wheat and maize-growing States 8j per cent, of the farmers were compelled to surrender their properties through bankruptcy, while lo per cent, were actually bankrupt, but were retaining their properties through the leniency of their creditors. The report stressed the necessity for the. diversification of crops by the wheat farmers, and indicated that the wheat areas were rapidly being decreased. It added: “The producers of crops which are rnamlv consumed domestically have succeeded" in readjusting themselves to present conditions. The tariff gave the farmers the necessary protection, hut _lhe depreciated currencies have limited foreign purchases,”—A and X.Z. Cable.