The work of the Little Farms Magazine in the founding of these Forward-to-the-Land Leagues has been unique and necessary. And its purposes two fold.
In the first place, it was of the utmost importance in meeting the grave problems confronting the nation, particularly that of the bringing our ratio of agricultural production where it safely balances the ratio of population, to have a medium by which knowledge of the intensive methods of agriculture could be brought to the individual.
The widespread interest in the forward-to-the-land movement, which has been taken up alike by press and magazine, has created a hunger for specific information which occasional columns of general news can not satisfy. Little Farms Magazine tells, specifically, how a small acreage will yield and has yielded, industrial independence. It quotes stories of those who have made good after leaving the old work of bookkeeping and clerking and taken a “little farm.”
The problem which the farm presents today is not the same as that of yesterday. The loneliness and isolation no longer obtains. The message that the Little Farms Magazine takes to the world today is that scientific agriculture makes the acreage necessary for individual maintenance so small that social life can be developed on the farm in the most ideal manner. The magazine advocates the upbuilding of the social center, with its library, its clubhouse and gymnasium, its moving pictures and mechanical music.
As I came through the country from the Pacific Coast and saw the empty acres of farm land waiting, and then entered the big eastern cities, and looked into the hopeless, pallid faces of its people, I could think that the earth, if it had a voice, would cry aloud with the cry of Him of long ago, who said: “How often would I have gathered thee as a hen gathereth her chickens, but ye would not.”
Chairman Wallace—There are fifteen minutes left. If Mr. Barrett, President of the Farmers’ Union, is here we would be glad to give it to him.
Address, “Farmers’ Union”
Mr. Barrett—Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: Speaking for approximately three million American farmers, I can say with absolute accuracy that the primary article in the creed of Conservation should be the conservation of the man on the land.
In volume and variety of resources, the United States is the mightiest nation in the world. It is true that the British Empire may, through its dependencies, have a greater territorial reach, but from the standpoint of a continuous stretch of land and the body of acres cultivated and susceptible to cultivation, America admittedly leads the world.
The effect of this handicap is indicated not only in the present breadth of our domestic and international commerce, but to a greater extent in the promise of its more wonderful commercial conquests yet to come. The Nation is barely on the threshold of its destiny. That fact should not mislead us as to the difficulties in the way of making the destiny real, and not merely a boastful prophecy.