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essons o 



f 1934 



By Dean H. W. Mumford, ^ 



College of Agriculture, University of Illinois 



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DEAN MUXFORD 



IN the school days of our youth the 

 "hard" teachers embittered us and 

 made us resentful at the time, but as 

 the years mellowed and matured us, we 

 looked back to revere and respect those 

 teachers for the lessons they had taught 

 us. Perhaps the finest thing we can say 

 about 1934 is that it may have been a 



hard enough teacher 

 so that we shall look 

 back some day in 

 thankful apprecia- 

 tion for the lessons 

 it has taught. For 

 the present, the as- 

 signment given me 

 by the editor of the 

 I. A. A. RECORD is 

 to set down my 

 views on what those 

 lessons have been. 

 To begin with, the 1934 Illinois corn 

 crop is estimated to be the smallest in 

 61 years. The oats crop was the smallest 

 in 58 years and the barley harvest was 

 extremely small. The year's combined 

 production of grain feeds and hay is un- 

 doubtedly one of the smallest on record. 

 The apple crop is far below average, and 

 the peach crop was only about one-third 

 of what it was in 1933 and considerably 

 less than a third of the lS'27-31 average. 



ii: L': V A Hard Teacher 



As if this were not enough to make 

 1934 a "hard" teacher, there was the 

 worst infestation of chinch bugs in his- 

 tory and the worst drouth and some of 

 the hottest weather that farmers of Illi- 

 nois have ever experienced. 



Not the leai^t of the lessons of the year 

 has been that "farm relief," so glibly 

 talked about by too many people, does 

 not come easy. There have been many 

 teachers who have tr:ed to drill this into 

 the public ever since farm relief began 

 to be talked about, but it has taken a 

 "hard" teacher like the year 1934 has 

 been to drive the lesson home. 



In the past we have been too much in- 

 clined to talk about farm relief as if it 

 were something that could be pulled out 

 of a magician's hat or at least something 

 that would take place with instant and 

 far-reaching benefits if only somebody 

 would do something about it. aj 



A This year something has been done 

 about it, and in the doing we have been 

 taught that it is not as easy as some 

 folks had thought, nor does it produce 

 magic benefits as speedily as those who 

 had talked loudest about it had hoped 

 that it would. In the, Agricultural Ad- 



i>.. 





DECEMBER, 1934 



justment Act we have had the greatest 

 mass movement of farmers, farm leaders 

 and farm sympathizers and the greatest 

 marshaling of public funds all working 

 for the betterment of agriculture, that 

 history has ever witnessed, and yet the 

 results have been slower, more painful 

 and less rosy than many had expected 

 they would be. 



He may have been too optimistic about 

 the prospects before, but any farmer who 

 has worked on his community corn-hog 

 allotment committee, for instance, now 

 has an idea of how much work, study, 

 patience, cooperation and perseverance 

 is involved in sound and lasting efforts ; 

 to improve the farmer's position. Nor 

 are these hundreds of community com- 

 mitteemen the only ones who have 

 learned the lesson. Approximately 1,200,- 

 000 farmers signed corn-hog contracts 

 alone. These and all other farmers who ' 

 have had contact of any kind what- 

 ever with the AAA have had a demon- 

 stration of what is involved in controlled 

 production. 



Requires Work 



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'■■' If the AAA does nothing more than 

 sober farmers and their leaders and 

 sympathizers into realizing that "farm 

 relief" takes something more than talk, 

 it will have gone a long way toward re- 

 paying some of the money and effort 

 that has been put into it. Having brought 

 this lesson, 1934 will not go down as a 

 total loss, in spite of all its other disap* 

 pointments and even though it yielded no 

 other lessons. 



There have been others, though. We 

 have learned, too, that high prices alone 

 do not necessarily mean high tides of 

 prosperity. Thus the developments in 

 1934 have taught us the necessity of 

 keeping things in balance. Short crops 

 have brought higher prices for grains and 

 will bring higher prices for livestock. 

 Even though prices rose last summer, 

 business activity declined. With commod- 

 ity prices averaging 10 per cent higher 

 in September than a year ago, business 

 activity was 13 per cent lower. This 

 acted as a drag on further price increases, 

 and beginning about the middle of Sep- 

 tember the general average of prices 

 turned down. . . 



;.: The lesson in this, of course, is that 

 sustained high prices are not possible 

 without general buying power to sup- 

 port them. To make good prices there 

 must be a healthy state of business ac- 

 tivity so that the other fellow can buy 

 what the farmer has to sell. Prices could 



(MOM WE'fUE 

 GETTING 

 SOMEWKEKtj 



"FARM RELIEF AND FARM PROGRESS CANNOT 

 come without close and sincere co-operation between 



farmers." 



*, ' ..•'•■ *i' r t,* ' 



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be arbitrarily fixed or set so that there 

 would be |16 hogs and |11 beef cattle as 

 there was in 1918, $1.50 corn as there 

 was in 1919 and $2.26 wheat as there 

 was in 1920, but if business activity was 

 at such a low ebb that the city man could 

 not buy the farmer*s pork chops and beef 

 steaks at these figures, the high prices 

 would profit the producer nothing. 



As Dr. L. J. Norton, of our department 

 of agricultural economics, has pointed 

 out, if business activity had been higher 

 and demand conditions more active, there 

 would have been even more striking in- 

 creases than have recently taken place 

 in the price of farm products. 



Fortunately, there are a number of 

 factors in the long-time outlook which ^ 

 point toward further recovery in busi- 

 ness activity and demand, but for the 

 time being at least we have learned that 

 high prices can not go it alone when it 

 comes to restoring more prosperous con- 

 ditions. ].^/;-;'*;Cj ,,. ."'-■V':,.'; ■;',/ ■^::::/ r''''^'^^ ■■''■■ 



' ;;v ; ;• Need Trade Recovery '%...J 



We may have learned, too, that we shall 

 have to do something to encourage in- 

 ternational trade and regain our foreign 

 markets before agriculture in Illinois and 

 the rest of the United States completely, 

 recovers. This lesson would not be as 

 clear as it is if we had not done as much 

 as we have during the past year and a 

 half to adjust and restrict production in 

 the hope of solving the problem by get- 

 ting on a self-sufficiency basis, v . 



Stimulating international trade and re- 

 gaining foreign markets for our prod- 

 ucts in some respects is a more encourag- 

 ing and more logical approach to the 

 solution of some of our problems than 

 is the widespread curtailment of produc- 

 tion. Unfortunately, however, the total 

 volume of agricultural exports from the 

 United States in the year ending June 

 30, 1934, shrunk even lower than it was 



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