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plant crops in the spring and harvest a big or little crop de- 

 pending primarily on the weather, regardless of the freezing 

 of farm labor, the fixing of farm wages, importation of labor, 

 the raising of a land army, and most of the other regulations 

 that may be promulgated from time to time. Some of these 

 activities will be of assistance to the farmer. The most impor- 

 tant is the deferment of farm labor. 



The deferment of farm labor will automatically supply a 

 considerable amount of labor in a sense not often realized. 

 Deferment will again serve to dam up the flow from farm to 

 city. Large numbers of boys from fifteen to eighteen years 

 of age who would normally migrate to the cities will stay on 

 the farm and help solve the farm labor problem. The effec- 

 tiveness of deferment will be diminished in some commu- 

 nities by social pressures which prevent requests for defer- 

 ment. 



The normal movement of surplus labor from farm to city 

 was accelerated by the disparity between farm and city in- 

 comes. As farm incomes and farm wages rise, the disparity 

 between farm and city incomes diminishes and the rate of 

 movement away from farms declines. 



State and Federal agencies will popularize the "back-to- 

 the-land" movement and the land armies. City folks will be 

 trained for farm work. However, back-to-the-land is no solu- 

 tion to the farm labor problem unless the back-to-the-landers 

 are young men who have physical vigor and have not been 

 away from the farm so long that they are no longer ac- 

 quainted with the changing phases of agriculture. 



It is relatively easy to transfer skilled farm labor to the 

 assembly line and make a skilled city worker in a short time. 

 Unfortunately, the process cannot be reversed. It may take 

 only two or three months to make an intelligent farm laborer 

 into an efficient shipbuilder. It will take two or three years to 

 make an intelligent shipbuilder into an efficient farm hand. 



