64 OUR USE OF THE LAND 



your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring 

 up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms, and the grass 

 will grow in the streets of every city in the country." 59 The 

 money policies of the farmer were expressed in the tickets of 

 the Greenbacker party, the Populist party, the Free Silver 

 Democrats of Bryan's time and the Progressive party of Rob' 

 ert La Follette, Senior. All of these proposals were defeated. 



FARMERS AND TAXES 



Although few people may realise it, one of the most power' 

 ful government influences on farm land is taxation. The prin' 

 ciple of agricultural taxes up until the 193CTs was to tax the 

 land according to the value of the crops it produced. The only 

 exceptions to this were in the earlier period of American his' 

 tory when the government was anxious to have the vast public 

 domain settled. At that time when a period of years was given 

 to a settler to pay for his land, the government did not levy 

 any taxes on the settler until the land was paid for. That was 

 an example of government using its taxing power to aid land 

 settlement. 



With the exception of the tariff acts, which were a kind of 

 taxation to aid industry, the government had rarely used this 

 taxing power for any other purpose than to raise revenue until 

 1933, when the federal government changed its approach to 

 the problems of the land. This change is a shift from a policy 

 of promoting land development to a policy of land control. 

 The government has used the taxing power as a tool to en' 

 force this control. The first Agricultural Adjustment Act, 

 passed in 1933, is an example of this use of the taxing power. 

 According to this act, the government taxed processors of 

 agricultural products to help raise money to pay for crop con' 

 trol and good land use. 



59 Hacker and Kendrick, op. cit., p. 313. 



