156 Singing Valleys 



of a few years ago. One side of the triangle represents the 

 farmers who raise the hogs and the corn which fattens them; 

 one stands for the packers who process the meat and deliver 

 it to the retail markets; the third is you and me the public. 

 No side can stand alone. Weaken one, and the other two are 

 insecure. 



When the towns are in the throes of a depression, and men 

 are out of work, women try to make a nickel do the work 

 of a dime. They buy less meat, and of the cheaper cuts; or none 

 at all. Immediately the retailers' orders to the packers fall off, 

 and the packers pay the farmers less for the livestock then 

 being driven into the stockyards. 



Drought which scorches the standing corn, floods which 

 wash away sprouting fields, winter dust storms which carry off 

 the topsoil which nourishes the surface roots of the corn, all 

 these are immediately reflected in the supply and price of pork 

 at every corner grocery. 



The farm situation did not come in with the Democrats. 

 Or with the Republicans. It had begun before Woodrow Wil- 

 son declared that a state of war existed between this country 

 and Germany. Since the turn of the century American farmers 

 have been facing the results of their own earlier extraordinary 

 success. The fact that farming in America was profitable drew 

 thousands of immigrants to our farm lands. It encouraged 

 them and the earlier settlers there to plow up more and more 

 acres of prairie sod and to turn grazing lands into corn and 

 wheat fields. 



Meanwhile the farmer in the Mississippi River basin was 

 being brought to pay the price of the pulp mills in the north. 



These monsters, by gluttonously eating away the forests, 

 were able to spew out the ten million and more sentimental 

 home magazines which jammed the R.F.D. carriers' sacks each 

 month. Actually, American farms have been washed or blown 

 away from under the rocking chairs of readers intent on the 

 love lives of Temple Bailey and Kathleen Norris heroines, 



