HELPING THE FARMER

Putaruru Press, Volume XII, Issue 562, 8 March 1934, Page 6

HELPING THE FARMER

ROOSEVELT’S VIEWS Referring to the effect of the depression on agriculture, Roosevelt says: “ The economic turn means nothing less than the shadow of peasantry over 6,500,000 farm families. . . . There will be no outlet for their products unless their 50,000,000 fellow Americans who are directly concerned with agriculture are given the buying power. . . . We are forced to recognise that while we have enough factories and enough machines in the United States to supply all of our needs, these factories will be closed part of the time and the machines will lie idle if the buying power of 50,000,000 people remains restricted or dead. . . . Farming has not had an even break. . . . Their-

necessities cost 9 per cent more than in 1914, and their products bring them 43 per cent. less. . . . This means the. farm dollar is worth less than half what it represented be 7 fore the World War. . . . That the farmer has to trade two waggon loads for the things which in ■ 1914 he traded one waggon load.”

Discussing the causes of thj£ Roosevelt says: “ The last three administrations failed utterly to understand the farm problem as a national whole. . . . They destroyed

the foreign markets for our exportable surplus beginning with the Fordney-McCumber tariff and ending with the Grundy tariff, thus violating the simple principles of international trade and forcing the retaliation of the other nations.

President Roosevelt’s remedies for that state of affairs is to reorganise the Department of Agriculture, institute the planned use of land, reduce farm taxation and to restore international trade through tariff adjustment. “We must devise means,” he concludes, “to provide for the farmer in the shortest possible time the equivalent of what the protected manufacturer gets from the tariff.”