CONSERVATION IS IMPORTANT AND PRODUCTION IS MORE IMPORTANT
February 15, 1918
It is very important that we should conserve many things, but especially food. It is, however, very much more important that we shall produce the food in order to conserve it. The governmental attitude toward production during the past year has been, at points, very unwise. There has not only been failure to encourage producing the one thing vitally necessary to this Nation at this time, but there has been at times, by unwise price-fixing, a direct discouragement of producing.
We have suffered severely during this winter because of this attitude in the matter of coal production. One of the factors in producing the misery and discomfort, especially among people of limited means during the severe weather of the last few months, was the improperly low price rate established last summer, and the uncertain and contradictory attitude of the Government on the question of coal production.
But important though all production is, the production of food, the production which we owe to the farmer, is the most important of all. This country needs more food. Its allies need more food. Only the farmer can give the food. It is nonsense to expect him to produce it unless he can make his livelihood by so doing. The farmer is thoroughly patriotic; he stands ready now as he has stood ready in every crisis of the Nation, pledged to do his full duty, and a little more than his duty. But he makes his livelihood by producing what is essential to the livelihood of the rest of us. He cannot produce unless he makes his livelihood. Not a step should be taken that interferes with his welfare, save after such wise and cautious inquiry as to make us certain that the step is necessary.
We should do whatever is necessary to help the farmer produce the maximum of food at this time. Moreover, every step we take should be conditioned upon securing the farmer’s permanent well-being. The city man is often utterly ignorant of the work and of the needs of the man who lives in the open country. The working-man and the business man who growl about one another are a little apt to join in growling about the farmer. The city Socialist is more utterly ignorant of the farmer than any other human being. Last fall the Socialist campaign in New York had for one of its battle cries the announcement that they intended to make the farmer give them five-cent milk. Apparently the detail that the farmer had to feed the cows and take care of them struck them as unworthy of notice.
The farmer must have labor. But there must be no importation of Chinese or any other cheap labor, whether permanent or temporary. The emergency need of farm labor for planting and harvesting can be met at this time just as the need for the national army was met. The farmer must have first-class prices for his products. No price-fixing at his expense must be gone into without the clearest necessity being shown, and above all there must be no repetition of the folly that marked the dealing with the fuel situation last summer. The farmer must have what capital he needs at a rate of interest not excessive, in order to plant and reap his crop this year. The aid can be given to groups of farmers who underwrite one another, so to speak, and, of course, if he can be given it by private means, so much the better. If that is impossible, then the Government should act. We should profit by the admirable California example to see that the help is given only to the man who is a real farmer and can really make use of it, but that it is extended in such a way as to be of genuine and material benefit.
This is the immediate need, and let us treat meeting this need as the opening wedge of a policy designed to prevent the growth of tenant farms at the expense of the farm owner who tills his own soil, and designed also to put a premium upon the permanent prosperity of the small farmer as compared with the big landowner.
THE PEOPLE’S WAR
February 26, 1918