PROGRAM OF RECONSTRUCTION 229 



on so small a capital and so slight a -margin, that one 

 season's failure often measures the difference between 

 success and failure in the enterprise. In a country of 

 rapidly increasing population and cheap land a great 

 deal of relatively inferior land comes into use. Inevit- 

 ably the farmers on this land feel at times the pinch of 

 untoward circumstances. The isolation of the farmer 

 as an individual and of the farming class as a group, 

 brings in its train certain handicaps in the way of inade- 

 quate information, difficulties in collective effort, sepa- 

 rateness of interest, and sometimes narrowness of out- 

 look. 



It would be idle to deny that some of the farmer's 

 troubles are due largely to his own deficiencies. Farm- 

 ers are of all degrees of capacity. Sheer ignorance, 

 unwarranted prejudices, undue conservatism, unwilling- 

 ness to cooperate, unwise use of land, inferior business 

 management, mere poverty of neighborhood life and 

 incentive due to lack of vision and of ambition these 

 have all played their part in the drama of rural dis- 

 couragement. But it is equally true that farmers have 

 been subject to an unusual extent to certain handicaps 

 that arise from social arrangements. It is, for exam- 

 ple, becoming more and more difficult for the landless 

 farmer to secure land and requisite capital for the best 

 use of land on terms that give him a fair chance for 

 eventual ownership. The existing system of distribut- 

 ing food products from farm to household is in many 

 respects exceedingly efficient; it is also in many ways 

 costly and wasteful. But the principal charge to be 

 brought against it is that it has been organized entirely 

 apart from the interests of the producers, and often 

 with the apparent purpose of deliberately crowding the 

 farmer to terms that represent his dire need rather than 



