American Agriculturist, June 2,1923 
The Purchasing Power of the Farmer 
The Farmer as a Consumer and His Effect Upon Business Prosperity 
T he American Agriculturist has in¬ 
vited me to take this place on the 
farm radio program furnished by 
that paper through the courtesy of 
WEAF. 
The public takes a lively interest in farm¬ 
ers as producers. There is desire to see the 
food come along, and every year it does 
surely come. Much advice is offered to 
farmers and some of it is good. They have 
the advantage of a good background of ex¬ 
perience. If the farmer were not conserva¬ 
tive he would not long have a farm. How¬ 
ever, science has done great things for agri¬ 
culture and progressive farmers are demon¬ 
strating its value. The public is 
pretty well assured of an ample 
food supply. 
Its interest should center upon 
our farming population as con¬ 
sumers, as customers, as users of 
others’ products and services. 
The farmers, by reason of their 
number and the nature of their 
occupation, form the chief body 
of buyers in this country. Their 
purchasing power fixes the bound¬ 
aries of business prosperity. When 
they cannot recover the cost of 
production of their crops for a 
series of years, and impair their 
capital seriously to keep going, all 
business necessarily slows down 
and we have hard times. This 
fact would be more apparent if 
the farmer were not a capitalist 
and could not arrange for credit 
after a single year of losses. The 
nature of farming is such that 
purchases of the necessities in 
production and of transportation 
continue for a time despite heavy 
losses. Credit can be secured and 
production continues. It results 
that many in the business world 
do not realize that their pros¬ 
perity is being undermined until 
the demand for their goods and 
services is seriously cut. The 
banker, the manufacturer, the 
distributor, the professional man, 
the holder of bonds and stocks 
haye a tremendous fundamental 
interest in the purchasing power of the 
country’s greatest group of consumers—^the 
farmers. 
The price paid for food delivered at one’s 
home is no index of the producers’ financial 
well-being, and that it not wholly—nor, it 
may be, chiefly-v-the distributor’s fault. For 
one thing, we like things out of season. We 
pay the freight and stand the waste of 
strawberries shipped from Florida and ship 
our berries into New England. 
Western Potatoes in New Jersey 
The other day in the Trenton, N. J., market 
I saw shipments of potatoes from Idaho, Min¬ 
nesota, Michigan and Maine, and New Jer¬ 
sey produces millions of bushels of potatoes 
that are shipped early in the season as far 
west as St. Louis. I bought the Idaho pota¬ 
toes at 3 cents per pound and did not bring 
a railing accusation against the transporta¬ 
tion lines for robbery, but only wondered 
whether anything was left for the Idaho pro¬ 
ducer when the potatoes traveled three- 
quarters of the way across our continent. 
In more conservative days we would have 
bought home-grown potatoes in the fall at 
one-third the price and stored for use until 
new potatoes came again. We have learned 
to be expensive to ourselves, demanding 
products shipped thousands of miles, and 
then we wonder if the farmer is not over¬ 
charging. Certainly I am not assuming to 
By ALVA AGEE 
criticize, but only am urging that the pro¬ 
ducer may not'be recovering cost of produc¬ 
tion no matter what our table supplies may 
cost, and we need his good purchasing power 
for any enduring prosperity. 
If the farmers could get a fair share of the 
price paid by consumers they could stay 
good customers of people in other industries. 
A difficulty lies in the fact that food produc¬ 
tion is in the hands of seven millions of men 
who are naturally inclined to be independent 
in thought and action. Steel products can 
be standardized and directed to consumers 
without much waste, because only a rela¬ 
tively few men need agree upon the whole 
matter. All the owners of stock in steel 
works, large as the number is, are relatively 
few when compared with all the producers 
of food, and yet what waste and loss there 
would be in that industry if each stockholder 
took his share of the product and hunted his 
own market for it. 
Some farmers realize the necessity of act¬ 
ing collectively in standardizing their prod¬ 
ucts and in directing them to market in an 
orderly way. If the public would encourage 
such collective action in every way, pro¬ 
ducers would be brought closer to consumers 
and the latter would have greater certainty 
regarding what they were buying, and the 
elimination of waste would mean better buy¬ 
ing power for the farmer. 
A Combined Capitalist and Laborer 
I have spoken of the farmers as a great 
group, and some such word must be used 
when we classify them industrially, but it is 
puzzling when workers in agriculture are 
discussed as a class apart from other Ameri¬ 
cans, and there is speculation regarding their 
economical and political views. The farmer 
is a combined capitalist and laborer, and he 
is of the same blood and family as the 
banker, the professional man, the merchant 
and the laborer in the city. The successful 
city man knows what the farmer is think¬ 
ing because the chances are that his own kin 
are on the home farm. We do not want 
group government, and we are not asking 
for legislation in the special interest of a 
class when we seek it to permit collective 
selling of farm products, or the creation of 
banks that can make loans whose maturity 
will synchronize with the turnover on a farm, 
or the barring of counterfeiting of honest 
farm products. Farmers now have a better 
understanding of their business needs, and 
being the largest group of customers that 
other industries have, their increased pur¬ 
chasing power is a consideration second to 
none in our country’s commercial program. 
Am.erican agriculture is peculi¬ 
arly dependent upon foreign 
markets, because we have an 
enormous amount of productive 
land and there is a surplus of 
products that depresses prices un¬ 
less other countries have good 
buying power. The day may 
come when we shall produce no 
more than we need at home, but 
there is time for many a man to 
lose his farm before that day 
comes. Anyway, we do not want 
to go back to the mental attitude 
of the Chinese when they con¬ 
structed their remarkable wall. 
We can’t build it, and it would not 
be well for us if we could do so. 
There is no possibility of making 
the world boundaries, as far as 
we are concerned, just three miles 
off shore around the United 
States. The misery of the rest 
of the world would come in as 
freely as alcohol now does from 
the rum fleet lying outside the 
line. I wish everyone could have 
heard Lord Robert Cecil speak 
before he returned to England. 
He made no plea that this coun¬ 
try do this, that or the other, 
but he pointed out that civiliza¬ 
tion in Europe was so endangered 
that another war would end it. 
Naturally he wanted our moral 
support in the promotion of peace, 
so that the countries of Europe 
could come back to a satisfying 
life. We cannot have any dependable 
prosperity until the countries of Europe find 
a way of recovery, and the parable of the 
Good Samaritan needs to be read in church 
every Sunday morning, if only in our own 
selfish interest. 
Some Radio Letters 
“We are sending in the radio questionnaire 
with some suggestions. We had our radio 
put in in December and we certainly do en¬ 
joy it. We live on a farm at the edge of a 
little inland town where the environment is 
not just what you wish for your boys, but 
the hours of entertainment, lectures and 
many other things that we get over our 
radio are not only enjoyed by ourselves but 
by our neighbors also. The class of speakers 
which American Agriculturist is giving us 
through WEAF is splendid.” 
* :i5 :i: 
“In the past I have had considerable trouble 
tuning in on WEAF, but have found their 
new wave length the past two evenings very 
satisfactory. Will watch for American Agri¬ 
culturist future Wednesday evening farm 
program/’ 
* * * 
“Kindly forward me a copy of the radio 
talk by Mr. Kenner, entitled ‘Pitfalls that 
Snare Uninformed Investors.’ ” 
Wanted to Close the Patent Office 
T he address on this page was delivered by Mr. Agee, who is 
Secretary of Agriculture of New Jersey, from WEAF station, on 
May 30th, at 6:30 standard time. It is another one of the talks in 
the American Agriculturist farm radio program. 
In 1812 an employee of the United States Patent Office suggested 
that the patent office should be closed as there was nothing more to be 
invented. Every time we take a speaker down to the broadcasting 
station and hear him talk through the air to perhaps a half million 
people, we think of the progress that has been made by man’s inventive 
genius since 1812. The employee of the patent office would certainly 
be a very much surprised man, were he alive to-day. It would seem, 
with all the machines and mechanical conveniences which we have 
around us, that we must certainly now be near the limit of invention. 
Yet, without the shadow of a doubt, the next hundred years will see 
even more progress than in the past. 
Just a few minutes before writing this, we saw a demonstration of 
lighting by wireless. Between the sending station and an ordinary 
electric bulb there was absolutely no wire connection; on the other 
hand, there were a heavy plate glass, several thicknesses of wood, and 
a thick rubber curtain, all excellent insulators. Yet, when the electric 
bulb came within a certain distance or “into the field” of the wireless 
waves, it became lighted. The demonstration showed how electric 
light waves might be sent from any railroad station or from the train 
disptcher’s office, lighting signal lights in the engineer’s cab of a 
rapidly moving locomotive, and further, how a train might be auto¬ 
matically stopped by wireless waves, should the engineer, for any 
reason, fail to respond to, the signals. , 
The possibilities of such an invention speak for themselves, and it 
is only one of literally thousands of mechanical, chemical and electri¬ 
cal equipment which the scientists are constantly working to perfect. 
—The Editors. 
I 
