Farmers are Worn Veterans

Stratford Evening Post, Volume II, Issue 220, 13 April 1933, Page 2

Farmers are Worn Veterans

Our business men are raw recruits in misfortune’s army; farmers are worn veterans. The farmer cannnot forever pay a toll to the people of the cities which makes everything he buys more costly than the things he sells. Nor can he go on forever with his futile fight against vast world tides which have, permanently we believe, swept away his old job. There are millions more farmers than are needed. What to do with them? One road for the farmer leads down bill. If industry does not revive, our farmers, competing with peasants, and selling to peasants, must become peasantry. Where the other road leads, nobody knows. It is the road of permanent subsidy. That is, we may tax the city dweller to maintain a decent standard of living on the farm. The farm problem is not entirely economic. It is social and political: there we may find strong justification. It might well seem important to us to preserve the one .large class of property owners, the one stable and rooted element. It might seem worth a high cost—and it might be cheaper than to add them to the breadlines of the cities —The Business Week.