Farmers' Alliance

“ But, when they call a national convention and construct a platform, announcing definite aims and methods, then there is something to talk about. Now, a man is either for or against “The Farmers’ Alliance.” Of course, he may be profoundly interested in the farmers’ welfare, and yet oppose their aims and methods, because he does not believe that real help can come in the way that they, at present, propose. But, until some plan is proposed, there can hardly be said to be any farmers’ movement at all. ”

“ While developing their movement they discovered that the natural alliance for their organization to make was with the men who were involved with them in the production of grain. And as the farmers have accepted the harvesters as partners they have formed in effect a coördinated producing combination. Without finally settling the problem of agriculture, they have strengthened the production group and eliminated strife at the most vital point. ”

“ Experience taught the farmer one lesson which he has never forgotten: that whether prosperous or not, he can and must promote his welfare by organization. So it is that, as one association or group of associations declines, others arise. In some States, where the Grange has survived or has been reintroduced, it is once more the leading organ of the agricultural class. Elsewhere other organizations, sometimes confined to a single State, sometimes transcending state lines, hold the farmers' allegiance more or less firmly ”

“ These it has never frowned on, though believing and always hoping that it might attract the majority of farmers to its own ranks, and by this unity become a more powerful factor in securing the rights and developing the opportunities of the rural classes of America. ”

“ The difficulty of uniting the farmers of America for any form of co-operative endeavor long ago became proverbial. The business of farming encouraged individualism; comparative isolation bred independence; and restricted means of communication made union physically difficult, even among those who might be disposed to unite. It was not strange, therefore, that the agricultural masses developed a state of mind unfavorable for organization—that they became suspicious of one another, jealous of leadership, unwilling to keep the pledges of union, and unable to sink personal views and prejudices. ”

“ Is there coming a time when the "man with the hoe" will be the true picture of the American farmer, with a low standard of living, without ideals, without a chance for progress?
We must eliminate the mossback. It is to be done largely by education and by co-operation. There must be a campaign for rural progress. There must be a union of the country school teacher, of the agricultural college professor, of the rural pastor, of the country editor, with the farmers themselves, for the production of an increased crop of new farmers. ”

“ I have no doubt that the rank and file of the members of the League are good, honest people who have been misled. I am certain that there has been much neglect of the rights of the farmers and that it is a high duty for this country to begin a constructive, practical agricultural policy. ”

“ What society wants is to learn, year by year, how much of the land of the kingdom is devoted to wheat growing, and barley, and oats, and roots, and what live stock we have to depend on for animal food. These facts could be learned, in spite of all opposition, as the League agents learned the agricultural condition of particular districts: but it would cost too much to do it without the co-operation of the farmers. ”

“ Roosevelt adopted in his Message transmitting to Congress the Report of the Country Life Commission—better farming, better business, [Pg 13] better living: we began with better business, which consisted in the introduction of agricultural coöperation into the farming industry, for several reasons which will appear later, and for one which I must mention here. We found that we could not develop in unorganised farmers a political influence strong enough to enable them to get the Government to do its part towards better farming. ”

“ Shall we march on to our destiny, blind and lame and halt? What will we do if England and other countries shall find it necessary to protect themselves from impoverishment, and reintroduce duties on bread-stuffs high enough to make the culture of wheat profitable? Where then will our farmers find a market for their superfluous corn, except to those engaged in industries which we should crush by removing protection? ”

“ The National Government through the Department of Agriculture should do all it can by joining with the State governments and with independent associations of farmers to encourage the growth in the open farming country of such institutional and social movements as will meet the demand of the best type of farmers, both for the improvement of their farms and for the betterment of the life itself. ”

“ Labor has such an organization in its unions. Business has it perhaps in its Chambers of Commerce and Boards of Trade. [Pg 219] Either of them has the means at its disposal for imitating the farmers and developing a bloc in the national legislature.
It is natural that the farm interest should be the first to push its way beyond the lobby or propaganda stage at Washington to that of organized representation on the floor of Congress. Agriculture is the single interest or the immensely predominating interest in many States. ”

“ The hope of welding the farmers into an organization which would enable them to present a united front to their enemies and to work together for the promotion of their interests—social, economic, and political—was too alluring to be allowed to die out with the decline of the Patrons of Husbandry. Farmers who had experienced the benefits of the Grange, even though they had deserted it in its hour of trial, were easily induced to join another organization embodying all its essential features but proposing to avoid its mistakes. ”

“ But you and I know agrarian reform is more than just the redistribution of land. We have therefore taken decisive steps also to ensure that the land remains productive for farmers. We increased agricultural support services and livelihood assistance to CARP beneficiaries. We encouraged them to organize cooperatives and to take advantage of economies of scale to enhance their productivity. ”

“ The Department of Agriculture has in many places, perhaps especially in certain districts of the South, accomplished an extraordinary amount by cooperating with and teaching the farmers through their associations, on their own soil, how to increase their income by managing their farms better than they were hitherto managed. The farmer must not lose his independence, his initiative, his rugged self-reliance, yet he must learn to work in the heartiest cooperation with his fellows, exactly as the business man has learned to work ”

“ A great many improvements require yet to be made in our system of handling grain. The struggle for the bringing about of those reforms is not by any means accomplished. As a great class of farmers, composing the most important factor in the progress and development of our country, we must learn the lesson that we must organize and work together to secure those legislative and economic reforms necessary to well-being. ”

“ The chief thing wanted now was to "clean the land," where noxious weeds, the Bolshevists of the soil, had been spreading with great rapidity. As for the tractors, the Board thought it a good thing that the farmers should possess their own, but would retain in its own hands enough of them to help farmers who could not help themselves—not a large class, I imagine, with produce at its present prices. ”

“ When the farmers sought political remedies for their economic ills, they discovered that, as a class, they had little representation or influence either in Congress or in the state legislatures. Before the Civil War the Southern planter had represented agricultural interests in Congress fairly well; after the War the dominance of Northern interests left the Western farmer without his traditional ally in the South. Political power was concentrated in the East and in the urban sections of the West. ”

“ Members of Congress were increasingly likely to be from the manufacturing classes or from the legal profession, which sympathized with these classes rather than with the agriculturists. Only about seven per cent of the members of Congress were farmers; yet in 1870 forty-seven per cent of the population was engaged in agriculture. The only remedy for the farmers was to organize themselves as a class in order to promote their common welfare. ”

“ We have Governmental powers now not only to enable Local Authorities to secure unused land for allotments, but to compel farmers to cultivate all their ground. We have fixed a price for wheat for five years, and a minimum wage for the agricultural man and woman. ”

“ Their temporary successes had demonstrated, however, to both farmers and professional politicians that if once solidarity could be obtained among the agricultural class, that class would become the controlling element in the politics of the Middle Western States. ”

“ The second proposition I lay down is that this necessary organization work among the farmers must be carried on by an organizing body which is entirely controlled by those interested in agriculture—farmers and their friends. To ask the State or a State Department to undertake this work is to ask a body influenced and often controlled by powerful capitalists, and middle agencies which it should be the aim of the organization to eliminate. The State can, without obstruction from any quarter, give farmers a technical education in the science of farming ”

“ We began our existence as a nation of farmers, and in every great crisis of the past a peculiar dependence has had to be placed upon the farming population; and this dependence has hitherto been justified. But it can not be justified in the future if agriculture is permitted to sink in the scale as compared with other employments. We can not afford to lose that preeminently typical American, the farmer who owns his own medium-sized farm. ”

“ The nationwide organization of farmers resulted, and it is a more real unit in the political consciousness than is that unit on which the Fathers laid such stress, the State. It is a minority that has no reserve rights under the Constitution but which achieves its rights by force of numbers and organization.
These economic subdivisions are the reality today. The United States is a union of the State of Agriculture, the State of Labor, the State of Manufacturing, and a dozen other occupational States of greater or less importance. ”

“ So we should begin now to consider what farm legislation we should develop for 1955 and beyond. Our aim should be economic stability and full parity of income for American farmers. But we must seek this goal in ways that minimize governmental interference in the farmers' affairs, that permit desirable shifts in production, and that encourage farmers themselves to use initiative in meeting changing economic conditions. ”

“ If this system was accepted, we would not have traders on our Council of Agriculture protesting against the farmers organizing their industry, because none but persons concerned with agriculture would be a owed to be members of agricultural committees, and this would, of course, involve the concentration of merchants and manufacturers upon the work of a Board of Trade and the control of a policy of technical instruction suitable for industrial workers, where agricultural advisers in their turn would be out of place. ”

“ In 1886, for instance, the Knights of Labor and the trades unions, for once coöperating harmoniously, joined forces locally with the moribund Greenbackers and with farmers' organizations and won notable successes at the polls in various parts of the Union, particularly in the Middle Atlantic and Western States. Emboldened by such victories, the discontented farmers were induced to cast in their lot with labor ”

“ It has been only a few years since a great noise was made by a society which proposed to unite all farmers in one great society which should fix a minimum price on all farm products and so settle matters out of hand. Just a year or two ago Farmers’ Union leaders in the South were telling the cotton farmers that only a great national organization could be of any real help in the marketing of their crop. ”

“ There was little use in the farmers attempting to organize in defence of their own interests unless the effort were absolutely united and along broader lines than those of any previous farmers' organization. Politics, they both agreed, would have to be kept out of the movement at all costs or it would land on the rocks of defeat in the same way that the Farmers' Union and Patrons of Industry had been wrecked. ”

“ Without that vision and belief in the townsman the farmer will never regain faith, and without that faith of the farmer agriculture will not revive.
[Pg 244] Statesmen may contrive, reformers plan, farmers struggle on, but if there be not conviction in the body politic, it will be no use.
Resettlement of the land, and independence of outside food supply, is the only hope of welfare and safety for this country. ”

“ The farmers have used the war in order to make huge profits for themselves, and then the government assisted them in connection with the potato regulations; and latterly, at the end of last year the Corn Production Act was passed not in the interests of the farm labourers, but in the interests of the farmers. ”

“ Farmers do not co-operate easily. They never had to co-operate largely under the old régime, for pioneer farming placed a premium on individualism. The present century however, with its emphasis upon organization and co-operation, calls the farmer to the task with the warning cry that unless he does organize he is in danger of losing his present industrial, political, and social status. ”