1 6 THE FARMER AND THE NEW DAY 



the working farmers of America as a class have not 

 been represented in any authoritative or adequate way 

 in the groups that have outlined policies nor in the 

 councils that have determined destinies, either with re- 

 spect to agriculture itself, nor in those fields of effort 

 in which the farmers as a great class of citizens have a 

 special interest. This is not a new situation. The 

 war has merely revealed it in an accentuated form. 

 The farmer has never been taken into council about the 

 big affairs of the nation in political, business or welfare 

 enterprises. "How will it affect the farmer?" is a 

 question seldom asked in a serious, intelligent way in 

 those conferences in which great movements for human 

 wellbeing are started and maintained. 



4. Our entrance into the world war also revealed the 

 absence of a national agricultural policy, clear, definite, 

 accepted by the farmers. The war made clear once 

 for all that the problem of food supply is one problem, 

 and that a program of activities for the farmers must 

 fit into a program not only for producing but also for 

 distributing and using the food produced. We did not 

 have at the opening of the war, and we do not yet have, 

 a food supply policy on a national scale, unified in its 

 program and fully cooperative in its methods, with all 

 agencies working as one instrumentality in an effort to 

 carry on one big task. Part by part we developed an 

 agricultural policy for the war, but slowly, hesitatingly, 

 partially. Our agricultural preparedness for the war 

 was but little further advanced than was our military 

 preparedness. 



5. It is quite clear that both lack of agricultural 

 representation in national affairs and absence of a dis- 

 tinct agricultural policy are in a very real way the 

 farmer's own fault. The secret of the matter is the 



