A WORD FOR THE FARM BILL

Within the next few days the House of Representatives will vote on a bill embodying the latest proposal for farm relief, the so-called domestic allotment plan, said to be favored by the President-elect. The bill has been criticized as a gigantic sales tax designed to help no group of producers at the expense of the consumer, and as the establishment of an agricultural dictatorship requiring a large army of agents throughout the country. These criticisms are in some measure true, but the bill offers the most promising solution which has appeared for a problem which is becoming steadily more acute and which will have its own violent solution if Congress fails to provide one. The bill should not be turned down without prospect of a better one.

The domestic allotment plan is the first plan for farm relief yet advanced which goes to the heart of the problem by seeking to control production. If the scheme is adopted the government will in effect grantee to every farmer who agrees to reduce by twenty per cent his average in wheat, cotton, or tobacco or his tonnage in hogs, a bounty sufficient to raise the prices of farm products as compared with industrial products to the level of twenty years ago. This bounty in turn will be collected from the millers packers and other processes of the four products, who will pass the burden on to the consumer in the form of higher prices.

It is true that the bill puts a great deal of power into the hands of the Secretary of Agriculture, who is charged with the task of price indices and with their distribution. It is also true that it seeks to raise the prices of farm products to a higher level than is wise in an experiment as yet untested. Finally it may be pointed out that although it is advanced as an emergency measure, its usefulness will terminate with its existence and that its continuation will bring up still further difficulties.

In spite of these drawbacks, the plan embodied in the bill has a definite prospect of success. The augment that it constitutes a consumers' tax, designed to shift to one class a tremendous amount of purchasing power, is no objection to the plan. Obviously that is the purpose of any farm relief scheme. The increased purchasing power of the farmer will soon make itself felt in the demand for industrial products. There can be no true prosperity in this country as long as a large part of the population is on the verge of bankrupted. Throughout the latter half of our history there has been a shifting a labor away from agriculture, but the movement has not kept pace with the increase in production. The plain fact is that there are too many farmers and the only immediate solution of the problem is a reduction in hours of labor and hence in production.