140 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



In short, the farm program must serve the best mterests of all our 

 people, and in my opinion that is the only kind of program the farm 

 people want or expect. 



Unfortunately, too many people still think of a farm program as 

 some kind of class legislation. There is too little appreciation of the 

 du'ect and definite ways in which it can benefit all the people and can 

 help make this the kind of a country they want it to be. 



Therefore, I want to list several ways in which we can expect 

 effective farm-production and price-stabilization programs to serve the 

 interests of all the people. 



1. It can help prevent depression. Most depressions have been 

 farm-led and farm-fed. Farm prices traditionally go down before, 

 faster, and farther than other prices. On the down swing of the 

 business cycle, farm people are the major early victims of a squeeze. 

 As theu^ income and, therefore, purchasing power is cut by low prices 

 or production failure, industrial producers find a contracting market 

 for their production. This throws workers out of jobs. They in 

 turn spend less for farm products, which in turn further forces down 

 farm prices, and farm purchasijig power is further cut. 



I don't mean to say that declines in farm prices are the sole cause 

 of depressions, but they certainly contribute greatly and would do so 

 more now than in the past because agriculture has become a bigger 

 customer of industry. 



Farm price supports cannot substitute for good markets that come 

 with full employment and foreign demand, and, I believe, almost 

 every farmer now understands the importance and relationship to 

 farm prosperity of good wages for city and industrial workers. Sup- 

 ports are no substitute for city markets, but they can at least slow 

 down declines m farm prices and provide stopping points so as to 

 keep our fluid farm prices from going rapidly into a worse and worse 

 relationship with nonfarm prices. 



2. A farm production and price-adjustment program can help build 

 markets for industrial goods and help maintain employment for labor. 



Industry today is dependent on the farm market to a far greater 

 degree than it has ever been. 



Let me illustrate this fact by listing some of the manufacturing 

 industry's equipment that is in use on one particular farm today and 

 which has been purchased since the last depression. This happens 

 to be a Michigan farm — not fancy — just a good family farm. Here's 

 the list: A combine, a corn picker, a portable elevator, one additional 

 tractor with required equipment to go with it (includuig a disk, drill, 

 and corn planter), a feed grinder, a pick-up truck, motor and pump 

 assembly for pumpmg stock water, an electric pump and pressure 

 tank for running water in the house, electric refrigerator, electric 

 stove, and electric hot-water heater. Think of almost any good 

 farm, and you make a similar list. 



Back in 1929 there were only 827,000 tractors on American farms. 

 At this time last year there were 3,250,000. In 1929 we had about 

 37,000 combines. Last A^ear we had 540,000. Tlie number of corn 

 pickers has jumjied from less than 9,000 to more than 300,000. 

 These are only a few examples. 



In 1929 less than 600,000 farms were electrified. Today the figure 

 is more than 4,000,000. 



