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HEN the price of wheat for 1917 was finally agreed upon and fixed, the consumer leaned back in his chair with the comfortable feeling that at last the Federal Government was looking out for him. That same fixing of price had a far different effect upon the farmer. With an interest at least equal to that of the consumer, he too has been watching and waiting through the season from sowing time until harvest for Government action. Now it has come in a fashion peculiarly irritating.

We've gambled on crops for years to our own loss," stated one farmer, "and now just as we get a chance to make a killing the Government steps in and interferes."

"How can I tell whether I can produce wheat at $2:20 at a fair profit?" argued another. "The price of farm machinery goes up steadily; so does the price of labor. Who fixes them for me?"

Doubtless these two producers can be classed as "unpatriotic" and made an end of-the only difficulty being that they may be multiplied by hundreds among farmers generally who are considering with doubt the prospect of patriotism plus loss or of safety without patriotism in the planting of crops for 1918. Figure out for yourself how much patriotism has affected the farmer during the past year.

When President Wilson sent out his appeal for greater food production, thousands of "war gardens" sprang into existence almost overnight. Well-to-do suburbanites plowed under their lawns and a few millionaires sold off their fancy stock, turned under their pastures and golf links, and planted in a kind of ecstatic fervor of patriotism. Just what the results of these enthusiastic efforts have been for the country at large is an open question. In my own vicinity the immediate effect was to impair the market for early truck, so that the farmers who patriotically responded to the President's appeal to "plant more suffered from unusually low prices on early crops. The late market proved much better, whether due to the fact that the enthusiasm of the home gardener did not prove equal to a double cropping or to the accident of a drought that dried up many a home garden but spared the deeper cultivated field crops is a second question; the one fact that is settled is that in a year of food famine and high prices early truck crops paid poorly and "planting more" in this section was a matter of patriotism purely.

Among my urban friends I meet frequently with the feeling that the farmer in this National crisis has plainly shown his greed and has put personal interest far above that of the country at large. Without question as to the personal interests of city dwellers and their relation to National interests, I rise in defense of the farmer. It is true that somewhere in the West there are farmers who have grown moderately rich in grain production, but the fact remains that the average farm labor income for the country is about four hundred and fifty dollars a year.

The year 1916 was the best that the farmer had known in a decade. In 1915 the country had a bumper crop year. This meant a year of low prices for consumers and of prosperity for the country. For many individual farmers engaged in the raising of perishables it meant glutted markets, crops rotting on the ground because it did not pay to harvest them. In the fall of 1915 many farms sold out under the hammer and many others lay idle and uncultivated during 1916. In this year began the food shortage. Prices soared. Farmers who had held on made money and were able to recover the losses of 1915. The year 1917 promised well, but early in the spring the cost of production began to mount. Seeds, fertilizer, machinery, and labor-the four essential elements of farm operation-all increased in cost by leaps and bounds. Freight deliveries were slow and uncertain, fertilizer and machinery for a particular crop often arriving too late. And on top of this came the appeal to plant, and plant more.

As a business proposition the appeal was in the nature of a

joke. Had it been made to any other industry in the country, it is doubtful whether there would have been a response. Can you imagine a munition manufacturer or a ship-builder heeding the Government's plea to make more shells or to build more ships? The immediate reply would be: "Where are our contracts?" But the farmer was offered no contract, no guarantee of any kind. On the contrary, before his crops were fairly in he was shocked and startled to hear of proposed price control, and this in the interest of the consumer.

The farmers about me are hard to convince that price-fixing will benefit both consumer and producer.

"It might, if the price is high enough," admitted one young farmer. But I'd feel better satisfied if they'd let the price alone and give me some labor. But I tell you, with this year to go on, I am going to be mighty careful to put in stuff that asks for little care.

That is exactly what the conservative farmer is going to do in 1918-put in stuff that will require as little care as is possible. The Government and the separate States have made some effort towards meeting the demand for farm labor. How have they helped the farmer up to date? I have no wish to decry the efforts that have been made in this line. We have co-operated with them on our own farm, and we firmly believe them to be the beginnings of a move well worth while. But I do want to show how they have sometimes worked out-in defense of the blame that is going to fall upon the farmer who falls short of producing his quota of the food supply needed in 1918.

One of the first means of help proposed was to put in tractors and do the farmer's plowing. Plowing is the longest, hardest job on the farm. When a chance to get tractor plowing at a fair price was offered to the farmers, they jumped at it. Requests for the tractors poured in upon officials until they were fairly swamped with them. Farmers about me decided to take the tractors and do without one team for the season, an economy worth a good deal with feed at a price never heard of before. But there was not money enough to buy a sufficient number of tractors, nor, had there been, would there have been time for their delivery. In our district three machines were secured. Operators who understood the machines were not obtainable and college boys were assigned to the job. Three of these in charge of one machine (three sons of millionaires) worked day and night and covered a good deal of ground, doing the job well-an excellent argument in favor of acquaintance with the gasoline engine from infancy. Under less expert management, no other sons of millionaires having been available, the other two machines broke down. In consequence, many of the farmers did late plowing with hastily purchased horses.

A second offer came from a camp of school-boys. Naturally this labor was inexperienced, and the city boys who came had soft muscles. Many of them returned after a week's trial. The farmers round about paid by the hour, and whether the boys went or stayed the farmers paid for the trying out.

"My beans are going to cost me a dollar a peck," observed one farmer as he watched a city boy on his first day. And during this time my friends in the city were asking me why we did not plant more when the Government was helping so much.

The Government was up against just the same old proposition the farmer has always been up against. Farm labor has never been in a position to compete with other forms of labor. When Dr. Jacob Lipman, of the New Jersey Experiment Station, in an effort to get men from the factories out to the farms, went this summer to the mill-rooms and offered the men there factory wages to do farm work, the men said, frankly: Oh, to hell with the farmer! The farmer exploits me." Next winter these same men will feel themselves further exploited in the increased cost of living, but they have not yet worked out the relation between their attitude towards farm work and the demand upon their pocketbooks. They refused to

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come. Even at factory wages longer hours and harder work had no appeal to their patriotism! Hence the substitution of softmuscled boys bribed by the promise of omission of school examinations in return for a summer of farm service. And before harvesting time was at its height these two left to return to the city to get ready for school in early September. The Government has a knotty problem to solve in keeping down the cost of production so that it will suit the consumer and at the same time to put farm labor where it has never been, in a position to offer wages, hours, and labor which will compete with those of other industries.

Next to labor the farmer needs capital. It was not long after the appeal to plant more went out that this need was realized. To meet it various sporadic efforts were made. The operation of the Federal Farm Loan Act was hastened; banks in various parts of the country offered short-time loans. Some of these were in the nature of a business joke. A group of patriotic bankers in a certain part of New York State offered the farmers in their district millions of dollars at five per cent on season's crops. Very few farmers took advantage of the loans. A Boston bank official told me that the same thing held true of New England.

"The farmers wouldn't take the money," he said, fairly spluttering with indignation. "I took a trip and offered it to them, and they wouldn't have it."

Why should they on those terms? Even if, as in some cases, no security was demanded, why should a farmer place himself in debt on a pure gamble in a season where there was a shortage in every essential of food production? The patriots who offered the money had no intention of sharing that gamble. All they stood a chance of losing was their one per cent of legal interest, while the honest farmer who would have to repay the loan even in case of failure of crops stood all the chances of losing out. The markets were unsettled, no prices were guaranteed. The money stayed in the banks.

The Federal Farm Loan, coming into operation soon after the appeal to plant more, has been fairly well taken up. It should be. It is the first step towards financing the farmer that is worth while. But it is only the first. As it now stands any farmer who wishes to secure a loan must have his farm appraised by the local farm loan association and by the Federal farm appraiser. He can obtain a loan of fifty per cent upon the valuation placed upon the land, and twenty per cent upon the valuation placed upon his buildings. Farmers who are strug gling to get along and to increase the productivity of their soils with little capital and small assets in the way of improve ments can only obtain loans so small that improvement of both soil and buildings must proceed very slowly. It is the same old story. The Federal Farm Loan, financed by bonds sold to the people at large, secures these bonds so well that the gamble still remains the farmer's. Just how difficult it is for a farmer with a moderate amount of capital to realize money on a farm was well illustrated in the case of a young couple in my own neigh borhood. They had taken a worn-out farm, with the intention of building it up. With little money, but with an income which insured them against want, they put every available dollar into the place, clearing stumps and hedges, rebuilding a part

of the house, and equipping the place with machinery. The work went slowly, but at the end of three years they had put three thousand dollars into improvements. A good deal of this went into pulling and blowing out stumps, clearing brush, and other forms of work which failed to bring immediate returns in production, although it increased the selling value of the farm. In the spring of 1917 the purchase mortgage of $2,500 fell due, and the holder did not. care to renew it. The young couple had the place appraised by a real estate dealer, who put a selling value of $9,000 upon it. With this valuation, they went to their bank and asked for a $4,000 mortgage. It was refused, on the ground that the bank did not care to handle farm mortgages. For three months after, those young people went from bank to bank and real estate company to real estate company, and were refused at every turn. Nobody cared to take a farm mortgage. The Federal Farm Loan Act was not then in operation in that State, and had it been it is doubtful whether the actual condi tion of the farm, despite the selling value, would have permitted a loan large enough to be worth while. One bank finally consented to place a loan of $2,500, but advised the young people to try a building and loan association. From this source they obtained a loan of $3,200 at six per cent, and to obtain this they had to pay a "premium" of $96. Both of them were bitter over the experience. "Here we

"It was humiliating," said the young woman. were engaged in a service worth while to everybody as well as to ourselves-the building up of an old, run-down farm. Yet upon a selling value of $9,000, fully justified by the price of farms about us, we could not raise a mortgage of one-third without paying a premium over six per cent interest, and this was hard to get. No wonder people do not want to farm!"

There is nothing in Federal machinery as yet for people such as these. The terms of the Federal Farm Loan Act as it is operating at present provide too little capital and demand too great a security to permit a man with small capital to upbuild old soils or to break in new ones.

As far as I know, the Government has taken no definite steps in the matter of securing adequate supplies of fertilizer. Yet to produce the amount of wheat the farmer is asked to raise in 1918 we need ten times the amount of nitrates now in the country. There is an available supply of nitrates in Chile, but unless the Government secures transportation at once for this supply or discovers some unknown source of nitrogen, the farmer who patriotically tries to raise wheat is likely to fail in the attempt. And the shortage of nitrates is a war shortage, as is the shortage of bread.

The fixing of the price of wheat will undoubtedly be followed by the fixing of prices on other commodities. For this the farmer waits. Hampered by lack of funds, by shortage of seed and machinery-admitted by the Government-by shortage of fertilizer and of labor, and with one definite act of the Government as guidance (the price of wheat), he is making his plans for 1918 and waiting to see if anything else will happen that will alter them. The Government assures him that the country stands ready to help him, and he thinks he knows just what that means. He knows what it meant in 1917. New Brunswick, New Jersey.

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O reform or progress in farm conditions in this country can be brought about until we know and recognize what the troubles and difficulties are; and usually we must know the cause of any trouble before we can apply remedies. An article published in The Outlook recently advocated for the solution of the shortage of food, as the result of inadequate production, the application of the factory system to farming. That looks good to people who live in the city, who know that the system works well in the mill or shop, or who are so far away from the farm that they do not see any reason why it should not work as well if applied to farm production.

To compare the two: The factory competes for its labor in the labor market with other factories and with farms. It pays a

certain rate for its ordinary help, say thirty cents an hour for nine hours a day, and proportionately more for skilled workers. The factory has, besides, overhead charges and charges for raw material. These cost items, an allowance for depreciation, another for selling costs, and another for profit, are added together to determine the selling price. If the manufacturer cannot get a price that covers these items, all of them, he either shuts up shop or goes into insolvency. In other words, the public must pay the cost and the profit. Labor in these lines is sure of its pay, whatever it is the law of the workman's lien guarantees it.

The farmer has his plant-land, buildings, tools, and stockwith certain charges of interest, taxes, and such raw material charges as those for fertilizers, insecticides, seeds, and upkeep

of plant. He, and in many cases members of his family, plant, care for, and harvest the crops. In nearly all cases they work, not eight or nine hours a day, but twelve, fourteen, or sixteen. At the end of the season, or when the market seems most favorable, the farmer sells his crops for what he can get. Not until then does he get any pay for his work, nor even know what he will receive per hour for his labor. In the average season I affirm that he is fortunate indeed if he finds that he has received ten cents an hour for his labor, while he could have sold his services at the mill or the factory at thirty or fifty cents per hour. Once in a while, with favorable conditions, and when crops are not too big, he will get well paid for his work-receiving perhaps nearly or quite as much as if he had worked in a factory; but in few cases does he get his pay every week or know what it will be until he does get it.

Now, then, I assert that this is the condition, and I ask you to admit this for the sake of seeing how it works out as a fact. Suppose our farmer, under pressure of the needs of the country, the appeals of our President, or ambition, does hire labor in competition with the factory, paying for the same the minimum. price of, say, thirty cents per hour. We will assume that the farmer has two sons, each representing nearly a man power, and actually worth more to him than the hired help. If the farmer and his sons each work three hundred days of fourteen hours, and sixty-five days of four hours, and their hired man works three hundred days of nine hours, at thirty cents per hour though, as I have asserted, the farm help would really make only about ten cents an hour under favorable conditionsthe labor of these four men will amount to $1,608. But from this amount the hired man must have been paid every week, and it is found that the hired man has taken out from this sum $810, leaving for the other three men, who have worked much longer hours and have done the necessary work on Sundays and holidays, only $798, or just a little less than the hired man secured. This gives the farmer and his boys only 5.09 cents per hour. They would have received a larger amount, ten cents per hour, if they had not hired the extra man.

These figures make it look as if the farmer and his boys worked one-third of their time for the hired man. And, further, if the farmer had not had the help of the boys he would not have been able, with the help of the hired man, to earn enough money to pay the man, if he took nothing out for himself.

Now, I assert that the above is a fair example of farm conditions; that the figures given are not harder than the usual facts, except that the average farmer does hire his help below the going wage of the city factory if he hires at all. I assert that the average Eastern farmer does actually and in fact work for his hired men if he has any.

Last spring, at planting time, four of the seven farm teams in my neighborhood worked out for contractors, mills, and on the highway the greater part of the time, when they should have been at work on the land putting in the crops. Why? Because the remuneration was better. It did not pay the men to work the land when they could work their teams for days' wages.

Does not the foregoing indicate why the occupation of farming in the East is at such a low ebb, why there is a shortage of production?

The Eastern farms are not worked to one-quarter capacity because it does not pay to work them. No ordinary man can continue to do business at a loss, and farmers are no exception. That is why more hired help is not employed and more produce raised in the Eastern States.

Perhaps you ask: If this is all true, why or how do they farm at all? Why can any one be found to farm? How are they able to live if they receive so low a price for their labor?

To answer the last question first. They are able to live by being economical. They cannot spend that which they have not, and they learn to get along accordingly. The laborer in town has a groceryman coming to his door every day, and in many cases twice or more. He and his family dress much better, they spend in some cases as much for car rides and amusements as the farm family spend for food and clothing. The farmer gets his rent on the farm, and he gets his food and fuel from the farm at wholesale prices. He lives largely out of the flour barrel, and nearly always under less expensive conditions than the city worker. This you can confirm by the thousands of country boys

and girls who have left the farm to live in the city, and again by the city girls who have, by some queer turn of fate, been obliged to learn to live in the country. They usually have in the country a small allowance to get along with, and learn how to live that way.

These farm people are of as high intelligence and character as workers in the towns and cities, and are entitled to as good living conditions. What has brought them to their pinched conditions, and what keeps them there?

There are many things that have contributed, but the largest single factor in keeping them there, and through these conditions producing the present shortage of food, is our extravagant,. wasteful, and inefficient system of distribution. According to figures approved by the New York Department of Foods and Markets, of the average dollar paid by the ultimate consumer the farmer receives thirty-five cents and the distribution system sixty-five cents.

The reader has only to look around him and follow a few examples back to the farm to verify these figures so that he will believe them.

I will not claim here that the average individual in the system of distribution gets too big pay for his labor. But all along the line from the farm to the consumer there are unnecessary expenses. There is unnecessary transportation, with high charges. The goods go through an unnecessary number of hands before they get to the retailer. The retail stores are unnecessarily du plicated. These stores duplicate delivery routes. They duplicate stocks of food in every neighborhood, and instead of competition to keep the price down there is collusion so that the buying price may be low enough and the selling price high enough to enable all these unnecessary duplicating agencies to live on the business.

In my neighborhood there are fifteen provision stores doing the work that three could easily do and should do. I believe that the distribution of provisions in my neighborhood could be easily and efficiently and satisfactorily effected at one-third the present expense, and perhaps less.

Now, then, all these unnecessary people in the system of distribution, all these unnecessary stores, are parasites on the farmer. He has to support them-not the worker in the town. The latter nearly always gets wages enough to live well and have some money for amusement, and perhaps to save. The farmer makes up the balance by getting along on what is left for him.

There seem to be several possible ways to remedy this condition, and it certainly must be remedied if food is to be produced in abundance. The Government, which is supposed to be by the people and for the people, but often seems to be for the big interests instead, can and ought to reorganize this system and make a better and more efficient one.

The working people in the country—the farmers—and the working people in the city, the factory and commercial workers, on their part can unite to organize a system of distribution for themselves that will be efficient and economical. If this is done (and I do not believe that the farmers alone can do it or that the town workers alone can do it), then the balance between labor in the towns will be struck, and the farmer can employ laborers on his farm, and can usually get back the money he pays them, although this can never be certain, for weather conditions, rain or drought or frost at both ends of the season, may interfere at times to spoil the results of the best laid and executed plans. Also, an overproduction of perishable crops always tends to reduce returns, so often the best years for crops are the poorest years of remuneration for farm labor.

Again, the present system of distribution is largely to blame for this condition, for it uses the fact of surplus production to hold down the price to the producers, but takes good care that the consumer does not get advantage of the lower price. It carefully avoids stimulating consumption of the product that is in over supply.

The cry is often heard in print and otherwise that the reason the laborers leave the country is because the wages are so low and living conditions for help are so poor. And this is said as if it were something that employers in the country were to blame for, and as if these employers could remedy this if they only would. But it is a fundamental principle of business that it

must pay. The farmers can get along, and do get along, on what they get out of their work, very much as a one-legged man in the city can get through the streets in a way. But if the farmer is to run a farm business, hire help, work his farm up to capacity, it must be done on business principles. That is, the hired help must produce enough so that its product will sell for sufficient to pay the wages and other expenses and show a profit. Under the present conditions, this can be done only in a few exceptional cases, just enough to prove the rule. If the system of distribution can be reorganized and made so efficient that of the consumer's dollar sixty-five cents will go to the farmer and only thirty-five cents be taken by the system, then the farmer can compete with the factory in the labor market, and an army of parasites maintained by the present system would be liberated for really productive work. The existing farm plants could multiply their production from four to ten times the present output. Prices of farm property, from being in a condition in which many of the farms can be bought to-day from one-half to one-fourth the amount it would require to replace the buildings, might be raised so that new land would be taken up and new buildings built. The Eastern States would, I believe, under the encouragement of a proper system of distribution, feed themselves. Tenements for farm laborers would be built on all the larger farms, population in the country would multiply, and such a wave of prosperity would sweep over the country sections that they would be the places where the good things in life would go to instead of to so large an extent being merely the places where the good things come from.

I have called your attention to the way in which the factory system works in the mill and shop. If we now try to apply it to farming on a large scale and with conditions as they are at present, one of the first things the management would do would be to arrange a selling system. It would have to devise ways to "get by" the present system of distribution, to get its products to the ultimate consumer cheaper than it is now done, before it could even pay expenses. Those who have made a success in the

application of the factory system to agriculture have done so, not by cheapening production to any extent, but by improving the price received. They have been able to do this by sending a large product to market, and then passing their goods over the heads of a lot of men in the system who help themselves from the ordinary farmer as he passes his products along.

If the reforms herein suggested were carried out, there would be no shortage of food. Our President would not have to call on farmers to produce more. The supplies would come along at a greatly increased rate, and there would be a large reserve on hand, carried on the farms. Under the present conditions the reverse of this is the rule.

Our President and the Food Administration do not seem to realize that the farmer must increase production as a business proposition if at all. They call upon him to do it regardless of his conditions, and the call has gone out to the farmer to be patriotic, to speed up, to plant more, to hire help, to increase production. Then, after he has made his plans to comply as fully as possible with these calls, the word goes out, "Everybody plant a garden! plow up the lawns! plant potatoes in the flowerbeds!"-in short, "scab" the farmer's job in every way possible. And after the crops are harvested, the Food Administration steps in and so regulates things that in many cases the farmers suffer serious loss, if not ruin.

If the Food Administration would cut out the parasites in the system of distribution, make that efficient and economical, the farmers would not feel so bad if their profits were occasionally small. But it makes the farmer feel like "laying down" to receive half wages or less, while at the same time he sees an army of duplicated workers, who do no real social service, living off the products of his labor, and in most cases living so much better than the farmer himself.

No system for increasing farm products can be a success without an improvement in the system of distribution. That is a big job; but this is a time for beginning big jobs. Waterville, Maine.

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THE time has come for a sweeping agrarian reorganization regardless of war needs. While the huge totals of our agricultural production and our immense aggregate wealth in lands have made farming our most stable and prosperous industry, there are many tendencies which, if not corrected, must lead in the near future to disastrous results. A study of what would be needed to give the returning soldier a reasonable chance to succeed will reveal the fact that for over half a century a sort of anarchy has characterized all our dealings in natural resources, including land. It is not the kind of anarchy that waves red flags and resorts to physical violence, but a more dangerous kind growing out of a pernicious carelessness wherever the protection of the public welfare runs counter to individual interest or greed.

If we are to provide for the returning soldier we must create for him opportunities which in many sections do not now exist and which will not be created except through Government aid and direction; and if we are to maintain the independence and hopefulness of the American character we must create broader opportunities for land-ownership by its cultivators regardless of the war.

The State of California has come to believe this and has passed an Act which is likely to exercise a profound influence on future progress. A board, created by the Act, is authorized to buy, subdivide, improve, and sell ready-made farms to actual settlers on long-time payments. The educational facilities of the Agricultural College have been mobilized to aid in the selection of the land, in the purchasing of live stock and equipment, and in the subsequent direction of settlers. In no other way can this educational equipment be so effectively used as during the pregnant years when institutions are forming. The operations

of this commission, which have only begun, already show what valuable results can be secured by having science go hand in hand with adequate financing and practical direction in the development of our agricultural resources. The lands which are being purchased have been examined by the soil experts to determine the size of farm units and the kind of crops which can be grown. The water supplies and health conditions also have been looked after. Co-operative organizations are being created for the purchase of live stock and equipment and for the marketing of products, and the settlers in their early years will have the benefit of competent business and agricultural advice. The opportunity to buy land for speculative purposes is entirely eliminated. None but actual settlers are accepted. and those who enter these new communities have a confidence and a feeling of permanence which have been lacking in the development of recent years.

It is along these lines that provision should be made for the returning soldiers, and now is the time for the Nation to begin to prepare. And we shall only be following the enlightened preparations of other countries if we enter at once on this most important work of preparatory reconstruction.

Nearly every country engaged in the war has made or is making provision to provide farms for returning soldiers. This is being done as the surest means of ending the semi-starvation which now exists and to enable soldiers drawn from shops and offices, who have broken with established habits and acquired a liking for outdoor life, to gratify this desire within the bor ders of their own country. France and Germany will have only to continue the methods and policies for financing farmers which were in existence before the war. The same is true in a less degree of Italy, where the Government during the past ten