THE FARM LAND 89 



and your neighbors approve of the plan which they have drawn 

 up for land-use in the newly laid out district. 



One winter night after the district plan has been accepted 

 you and your neighbors meet in the school house. You lay out 

 and agree upon a general set of rules governing land use in your 

 district and elect supervisors to manage the plan and see that 

 the rules are enforced. With the advice of a soil conservation 

 expert, who has been working on a nearby demonstration proj 

 ect, the final details of the district plan are worked out. After all 

 objections to the plan have been heard and adjusted the plan 

 is finally put to work. 



By 1938, crop prices are beginning to sink. You aren't so 

 well off as you were in the first days of the Triple A. Machinery 

 prices are high. The mower you could have bought for $90 

 last year costs $100 this year, and so on. According to all 

 reports there is going to be an over-supply of grain and dairy 

 products. Then a new Triple A law is passed. According to 

 this there is going to be crop insurance, marketing quotas, 

 conservation payments, and commodity loans. 



If you want to limit the amount of wheat that is to be sold 

 in the United States, you can vote to give the Secretary of Agri 

 culture the power to set a quota, beyond which farmers cannot 

 sell wheat without paying a penalty tax. If you feel like it, you 

 can sign up to limit your crops, plant soil-conservation crops, 

 and as a result get a soil-conservation payment. This plan is 

 very similar to the crop allotment plan of the year before. The 

 only real difference is the penalty tax which has been added to 

 help enforce marketing quotas. Like the old plan, it can be put 

 into action only if three fourths of the farmers concerned vote 

 to accept it. 



If you need cash to tide you over until prices go up you can 

 get a commodity loan from the Department of Argiculture. 

 The amount you can get depends on a thing called parity price, 

 a figure determined by the Secretary of Agriculture. It is based 



