124 THE FOOD CRISIS AND AMERICANISM 



filed. I have observed that statements of the amounts 

 of mortgages filed and released in the month of March 

 in various counties find their way, not only into the 

 local papers, but into the press dispatches and the pat- 

 ent inside of small papers. From these items, the lay 

 reader would assume that that community must be 

 rapidly wiping out its farm mortgage indebtedness; 

 while had the corresponding items for February been 

 published, he would assume that the same community 

 was tremendously and hopelessly in debt. 



Local pride might account for the appearance of 

 these misleading items in the rural press, but it would 

 hardly account for their appearance in press dispatches 

 and elsewhere throughout the country, unaccompanied 

 by any figures or statements indicating that these were 

 unusual, or figures to show the total or relative 

 amounts of mortgages made and released throughout 

 the year. A better understanding between the con- 

 suming and producing classes would be helpful to both, 

 and a tremendous factor in the prevention of profiteer- 

 ing. 



Another serious misapprehension, one under which 

 perhaps the majority of the American people labor, 

 is that the small farm and intensive farming, if not 

 one and the same thing, are inseparable. Nothing is 

 further from the truth. The large number of experi- 

 ments made by the Federal Department of Agricul- 

 ture, Agricultural Universities and others, show that 

 small farming tends neither to better conditions of the 

 farm, larger profits to the farmer, improved living 

 conditions, increased yield, nor better quality of prod- 

 ucts. That these things must be true is obvious. The 



