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Publlihed monthly by the llUnoli Affrlcultural AKodatlon at 404 North Weslej Ato., Mount Morris, 111. Entered as second-clasi matter at pott-offlce at Mount Morrli, HI., 

 Oct. 20, 1025. under the Act of Mar. 3, 1879. Acceptance for mailing at ipeclal rate of postage prarlded In Section 412. Act of Feb. 28, 1(25, authorized Oct. 27, IKS. 



Number 2 



February, 1930 



Volume 8 



Economic Justice THrougli Organization 



J 



Agriculture's Strength Must Be 

 Gathered and Co-ordinated 



By HON. ARTHUR M. HYDE, Secretary of Agriculture, Springfield, HI., Jan. 31, 1930 



I -! 



Note: There has been such a large call for 

 copies of Mr. Hyde's recent address that we are 

 printing it in full herewith. Mr. Lowden's speech 

 will be found in the February Illinois Bureau 

 Farmer. — Editor. 



THERE is no shortage of plans for 

 farm relief. I have read bales of 

 them. They run the whole gamut of 

 economic theories, and of human emo- 

 tions. They plumb the depths of per- 

 petual despair. They scale the heights 

 of ecstatic prophecy. They advise the 

 farmers to go to work and all will be 

 well. They urge the farmers to rely 

 on law makers as 

 a sure path to 

 glory. They ring 

 the changes on 

 truths as old as the 

 centuries, and on 

 fallacies which 

 were exploded 

 when Pharaoh was 

 a boy. They pro- 

 pose the comfort- 

 able policy of leav- 



Hon. Arthur M. Hyde ^ t^ ^1_ t" 



ing to Father Time 

 the task of restoring economic balance 

 to agriculture. They advocate enacting 

 prices into law. From laissez faire to 

 price fixing — such are the heterodox re- 

 sults when the problem is everybody's, 

 and when everybody is thinking 



about it. 



Comes Too Late 



From the farmer's standpoint, the 

 weakness of the laissez faire theory is 

 that an economic balance which is re- 

 stored in bankruptcy is a wee bit too 

 late, — and the defect of price fixing is 

 that it will not work. Farmers should 

 use their undoubted power more wisely 

 than King Canute. The attempt to or- 

 der economic tides to stand still will 

 result exactly as did the order to stem 

 the tides of the sea, — in wet feet. It is 

 safer, surer and more effective to work 

 in harmony with economic laws. 



It is a happy and helpful thing that 

 everybody is thinking on farm prob- 

 lems. Diverse results are to be expected. 

 Nevertheless, you may start your rea- 



" AGRICULTURE must be or- 

 -^T- ganized. We mix plenty 

 of brains with the soil in our 

 production of crops, but we do 

 not consider the market before 

 we plant, nor can we follow our 

 production through in the mar- 

 ket after it is produced. We 

 use scientific methods to plow, 

 seed and reap; we use no 

 method at all in regulating the 

 size of the output or the move- 

 ment to market. Unorganized, 

 we have little voice in the sale 



of our own products 



"Shall we continue an- 

 nually to pile up mountains of 

 foods and fibers, the very size 

 of which reduces the world 

 price, breaks the price at home, 

 and leaves us poorerT Shall we 

 perpetually attempt to pile the 

 mountain higherT There is 

 nothing economically sound or 

 socially desirable about pro- 

 ducing crops to sell at less than 

 the cost of producing them." — 

 Hon. Arthur M. Hyde before 

 ISth annual convention I. A. A., 

 January 31, 1930, Springfield. 



soning at any given point on farm 

 questions and your logic will, in the 

 end, bring you inevitably at grips with 

 the problem of the surplus. By sur- 

 plus I do not mean merely the carry- 

 over. Some carry-over is necessary. 

 Nor does surplus always mean the mar- 

 gin over domestic consumption. Of 

 some products, such as cotton, we shall 

 always be exporters. The surplus with 

 which farm thinking must busy itself, 

 is that part of the crop which the mar- 

 ket, domestic or foreign, cannot absorb 

 without disastrously breaking the price, 

 American agriculture is over-ex- 

 panded. We produce a price breaking 

 surplus of many staple crops. Other 

 factors contribute to complicate the 

 farm problem. Over-expansion is 

 fundamental. 



Too Much Expansion j 



The land policy of the United States 

 has for over a century been a policy of ■ 

 expansion. Early in our histotry we 

 ceded more than 100,000,000 acres to 

 stimulate internal improvements. We ■ 

 have given our lands as bonuses to sol- ' 

 diers. We have offered them freely to 

 homesteaders. We have held it to be 

 economically wrong to permit land to 

 be undeveloped. 



Other forces have stimulated pro- 

 duction. The war brought under plow 

 many millions of acres which were 

 needed for emergency food supply. In- 

 terest, taxes, and other fixed charges 

 are operating to hold ^many of those 

 acres in production. Scientific farm- 

 ing, purebred seeds, purebred sires, new 

 varieties of plants have spread the acre- 

 age and increased its productivity. The 

 use of improved machinery, and the in- 

 creased efSciency of power driven ap- 

 pliances have expanded the productive 

 power of farm labor. The automobile 

 and the tractor have since 1920 dis- 

 placed 5,819,000 horses, and released 

 for other purposes 18,000,000 acres 

 formerly required to feed them. 



Consider the combine. This ma- 

 chine eliminates the grain binder, the 

 shocking, the stacking and the thresh- 

 ing by combining them all in one ma- 

 chine. It reduces the cost of producing 

 wheat to a small fraction of the former 

 expense. It has revolutionized wheat 

 growing, made possible the cultivation 

 of a vast acreage, and precipitated the 

 wheat crop of America into the market 

 in an ungovernable torrent, which has 

 choked elevators, embargoed ports, filled 

 ships and thousands of railway cars, — 

 in short has well nigh broken down 

 the marketing and distribution ma- 

 chinery of America. 



Constant Change ' (i 



In 1926, Kansas had 8,000 combines. 

 In 1928, she had 20,000. North Da- 

 kota in 192 5, had its first combine: 



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