Cook: City and Country 



169 



journals abound in comparisons of 

 farming with urban business, leading 

 to one conclusion. "The farmer is 

 operating his business at an actual loss 

 and that is the reason he is quitting the 

 farm." "He knows that ha is not 

 getting paid in proportion to the capi- 

 tal, energy and brains he is putting 

 into his business." "The building up 

 of a farm business is the hardest and the 

 most precarious undertaking in the 

 world today." "No other business on 

 earth can stand the handicaps which 

 confront the farmer." "The American 

 farmer today is the most burdened, 

 perplexed and over-worked member of 

 society." Instead of certain percent- 

 ages of profit being guaranteed, as in 

 many urban undertakings, the farmer 

 has no assurance of even a wage return 

 for his labor. He finds it impossible 

 to agree with Thomas Jefiferson, that 

 "The pursuits of agriculture are the 

 surest road to affluence." Now it is 

 the farmer, rather than the factory 

 worker, who feels himself "Condemned, 

 like Sisyphus of old, to roll the stone 

 of labor up the steep acclivity of life." 

 One writer has discovered from the 

 income-tax returns that "... of 

 twenty-two selected occupations the 

 farmer's class contributes least in 

 the aggregate, although it is numeri- 

 cally the largest class in the country." 

 Agriculture, according to this leader of 

 finance, is "a great industry exempt 

 from the excess profit and war profits 

 tax and apparently not effectively 

 reached by the income tax." Instead 

 of being impressed by the unprofitable 

 state of agriculture, the financier argues 

 that the system of taxation must be 

 unfair, and asks whether "the politi- 

 cians . . . would not devise means 

 to lay an effective tax if the same 

 situation existed in a business in- 

 dustry?" 



GROWTH OF DEPENDENCE IN CITIES 



As yet there is no control or limita- 

 tion of the number of people who are 

 allowed to engage in profit-taking 

 "industries," nor of the extent of their 

 exaptions. Predatory commerce and 

 finance, in their effects upon agricul- 



ture and other producing industries, 

 are more injurious to the public than 

 many of the forms of gambling that 

 have been prohibited by law. Why 

 should it be considered a natural ri^ht 

 to stop producing and go to taking 

 profits or drawing support from the 

 urban rake-off? For the protection 

 of the public, licenses are required io: 

 many kinds of urban business, and 

 this policy could be extended to 

 prevent over-crowding of urban occu- 

 pations, and much needless parasitism 

 and dependence in cities. To permit 

 unrestricted entrance to the nonpro- 

 ductive "business industries" is like 

 allowing any applicant to begin draw- 

 ing a pension. The pension system 

 would break down, of course, like the 

 "business industries." 



Whether we say that all unnecessary 

 middlemen are parasites, or that all 

 unnecessary costs of handling and 

 marketing are parasitic, the tax on the 

 public is the same, and there is the 

 same need of improving the commercial 

 system, to stop the present leakage 

 between producers and consumers. How 

 to eliminate the middleman is being 

 discussed, too often without under- 

 standing that a better commercial 

 system must be developed. Profiteer- 

 ing, as we now call it, is nothing new, 

 except that the large-scale operations 

 of recent years have produced the new 

 reaction that the word symbolizes. 

 The stage of exasperation is reached 

 when farmers see no recourse except 

 to go on strike and reduce production, 

 like urban industrial workers. Radical 

 agitators flourish in rural communities, 

 and some of the more primitive ele- 

 ments take to night-riding and burning 

 of tobacco-barns and cotton-gins, to 

 retaliate against "the system," and 

 those who profit by it or weakly 

 support it. In the words of a con- 

 servative farm editorial, "The people 

 of the United States might as well 

 accept it as a fact that producers have 

 accjuired a class consciousness." 



In some respects the feeling among 

 farmers may be compared to that of 

 the Revolutionary period when the 

 American Colonies separated from 



