142 FARMERS' UNION AND FEDERATION 



United States to be Operated as a Single Farm. 



One of the greatest advantages to be had from the union- 

 ization of farmers is the balancing and constant adjustment 

 in the production of the many different farm products 

 throughout the United States to prevent any of them be- 

 coming a drug on the market from overproduction in a 

 series of years, and to produce things most needed. As it 

 is now, the pendulum of production swings to extremes in 

 any product that happens to be for a while, through scarcity 

 or manipulation, above its normal price compared with 

 other products. When there is more money to be made in 

 raising and feeding hogs and cattle than in raising cereals 

 for a few years, then all who can turn to their production. 

 Farms are seeded to hay crops and production of grain crops 

 abandoned. This, then, is carried to the other extreme, which 

 reverses prices, putting grain, especially corn, too high to 

 feed to an ever declining beef and pork market. Then at 

 once all abandon stock feeding and go into grain production 

 until the price pendulum swings to extremes in the other 

 direction. The same process goes on between the several 

 different grain crops and between grain and cotton, owing to 

 such large sections of the United States being adapted to the 

 production of a large variety of products. 



There is nothing now to guide a farmer in determining in 

 advance what products he should raise to produce the most 

 money. It is the blindest kind of a gamble if he hits it. 

 Were the farmers unionized by products an executive com- 

 mittee of each would form the National Crop Survey Board, 

 to determine in advance what crops should be increased and 

 what decreased and to what per cent in the several districts 

 the nation would be divided into. The entire United States 

 would thus be operated as one mammoth farm in the pro- 

 duction of all its farm products for both home consumption 

 and export. This service alone would be worth billions of 

 dollars annually to the farmers and more than justify all 

 their expense and work of unionizing. 



