Economic essays

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1753623200

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136107

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Economic essays

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: viii, 368 S.; Ill., graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: The farmers' indemnity / Alvin S. Johnson

Collection:: Economics Books

THE FARMERS’ INDEMNITY difference: The Frenchman wouldn't sell, even at his inflated price; the American would shade his price considerably in order to sell. The Frenchman's price is only a private fancy which has nothing to do with the state of agriculture. The American’s inflated price is an active force in building up the burden of debt borne by the farms. If one traced out the history of the French wheat farm one would probably find that from the time of the French revolution to the present day it has never paid a sou of interest on mortgage debts or of rent to absentee owners. [ts proprietors have lived on it in contentment, and at death have left it, with regret, to contented sons or daughters. For every franc’s worth of produce sent to town the farm has been able to bring back a franc’s worth of goods: brick, tile and lum- ber for the extension of the buildings, commercial fertilizer, such implements and machinery as the state of technique might require, and of course not a few mere gauds, ribbons and tinsel for the wife, pipes and shotguns and government bonds for the husband. There is a just balance of trade between farm and city, in France, and therefore, though the French are not the best farmers in the world, the whole countryside smiles with prosper- ous contentment. Our American balance is all out of Kkilter; therefore a countryside which by nature should be entrancing is too often utterly disconsolate. The frequent turnover of farms loads the country up with lebts and robs it of the surplus on which a rich and agreeable rural life could be based. And the resultant dullness and thin- ness of life accelerates the farm turnover. Discontent is one of the most infectious of diseases. You may be as serene a spirit as ever yearned to sit still. Yet if all around you men are selling out or longing to sell out, you become infected yourself and sell out if you get a chance. The rising generation is most seriously affected by this community restlessness. In some dis- tricts they regularly fly the nest as soon as their feathers are half grown, and nothing remains to hold down the farms but men and women of middle age and downward. The women—and this is the worst sign of all—are seriously infected with the prevailing discontent. Forty years ago almost every farmer's wife had a whole repertory of songs, the burden of which was: “Stay on the farm.” Those songs have died out. The farmer’s wives of today, if they were not too discouraged to 225

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