Making the Ideal Practical 



By HENRY A. WALLACE. Secretary of Agriculture 



y^T IS a pleasure to be here tonight 

 iJj at the meeting of the Illinois 

 \^__y Agricultural Association. As I 

 look about me I see the faces of many 

 with whom I have fought shoulder to 

 shoulder in the battles for justice to agri- 

 culture. For years your association has 

 been one of the most effective state units 

 in the American Farm Bureau Federation. 

 Your membership is very largely com- 

 posed of men who can and do get things 

 done. 



The President, in his addresses from 

 time to time — in his acceptance speech 

 at Philadelphia last June, in his Madison 

 Square Garden speech in New York in 

 October, and in his message to Congress 

 early this month — has held up to the 

 American people the ideal of social jus- 

 tice which was in the hearts of the proph- 

 ets of old. In his second inaugural 

 address a few days ago, he indicated that 

 this vision of social justice must not be 

 merely a dream of a promised land. He 

 declared that we are beginning to wipe 

 out the line that divides the practical 

 from the ideal. To wipe out that line 

 between the ideal and the practical by the 

 use of democratic processes is a task to 

 which we must set our hand. 



All Fanners To Benefit 



In this work it seems to me that agri- 

 culture has done much to lead the way. 

 I hope it can continue to be in the fore- 

 front. I hope that the work done will 

 benefit not only the upper third of the 

 farmers — the so-called Master Farmers 

 — but will benefit also the farm people 

 at the bottom of the pile. To do this 

 in a practical way is the challenge the 

 President has placed before us. 



During the first four years of this ad- 

 ministration we have had continually to 

 meet emergencies caused by the loss of 

 foreign markets, by drought and by un- 

 employment. Now we must get down 

 to solving the problem of economic de- 

 mocracy in a way better than any nation 

 has yet discovered. We have a real start 

 on this in the Triple-A through the 

 farmers' associations and committees 

 which have carried out the adjustment 

 and conservation programs. These associ- 

 ations and committees have become so 

 well established it is hard to realize that 

 only four short years ago they did not 

 even exist 



I believe the democratic approach to 

 the problems of agriculture has real and 

 tangible practical value. The first and 

 most obvious advantage is economy. 

 When the local costs of administration are 



assessed against money going to farmers, 

 there is real incentive to keep the costs 

 down. And that reminds me we haven't 

 heard much lately of the arguments that 

 used to emanate from the big grain 

 dealers and from Wall Street financiers 

 back in McNary-Haugen days, to the 

 effect that any so-called "farm relief" 

 plan was bound to break down because 

 of prohibitive costs of local administra- 

 tion. These gentlemen solemnly warned 

 the farmers that hordes of government 

 agents would overrun their farms, make- 

 ing life miserable for them and bankrupt- 

 ing the federal Treasury. As 1 say, we 

 haven't heard much of this lately. 



Farmers Improve Their Lot 



Another practical advantage of this 

 method is the efficiency it makes pos- 

 sible in the adaptation of a national 

 program to varied local conditions. No 

 set of '"blueprint planners"' in Washing- 

 ton, no matter how wise, could devise 

 and execute a program that in all its de- 

 tails would fit all the local conditions, 

 which have almost infinite variety over 

 the United States. The democratic meth- 

 od has made the Triple-A programs 

 workable 



As you review the gains of these four 

 years — farm income almost doubled 

 for the country as a whole, farm homes 

 kept from going under the sheriff"s ham- 

 mer, and a good start made toward the 

 preservation of the irreplaceable fertility 

 of the nation's soil — you have reason to 

 rejoice. You and farmers in other parts 

 of the country have discovered your capa- 

 city for improving your lot through 

 united effort. I hope and believe that 

 not for many generations will the farmers 

 of the United States sink back to the 

 pit caused by their unbridled competition 

 with each other, in which they found 

 themselves in 1932. 



The improvement I have just been de- 

 scribing has been made primarily by those 

 farmers carrying on what we may call 

 "commercial agriculture." This category 

 doubtless includes by far the greater 

 portion of the farmers of Illinois. But 

 what about those in this and other states, 

 at the bottom of the pile? 



I am sorry to say that, even yet, per- 

 haps one-third of our farm families are 

 living at a bare subsistence level. For 

 various reasons the disparity between the 

 "top" and "bottom" of agriculture has 

 widened with the years. . . . Some of these 

 farmers in the "bottom third" are strug- 

 gling to pay for their own farms, some 

 are tenants or sharecroppers, and some 



"I haven't heard much of thif lately." 



are employed on farms as hired labor. 

 No doubt a great many are on the way up 

 what has hieen called the "agricultural 

 ladder," and will eventually become in- 

 dependent farmers owning their own 

 farms. But depressions such as the one 

 from which we are now emerging always 

 shake many farm people off the ladder, 

 or cause them to go down a few rungs, 

 instead of up. 



Four Ways Out 



What is the future for the farm fam- 

 ilies who are dependent on government 

 help of the kind given by the Resettle- 

 ment Administration ? There seem to be 

 only four possibilities — first, to become 

 self-supporting farmers- selling their 

 products in the commercial markets; sec- 

 ond, to continue essentially on a self- 

 sufficient basis, but with improved stand- 

 ards of living through greater efficiency 

 of production or through being placed 

 on better land; third, to obtain oppor- 

 tunities for part-time work in factories 

 or at other non-farming tasks near home ; 

 or fourth, to leave their farms entirely 

 and go into industrial work in the cities. 



There is no single panacea for this 

 complicated problem. Some farmers, 

 with the aid of the government's re- 

 habilitation loans, may become fully self- 

 supporting in the commercial agriculture 

 field. Others, as opportunities open up 

 in industry, may prefer to turn to some 

 other occupation. And gradually, further 

 decentralization of industry will bring 

 opportunities for combining factory work 



(Continued on page 10) 



FEBRUARY, 1937 



