Favored Farmers

I

FOR twenty years I earned my living as a small-town supply merchant, my field of operations covering a radius of thirty miles. My forbears, for many generations, had been large farmers in a distant state — planters, as one would say here, with sub-Potomac particularity. But because my father had been obliged to begin life anew, landless and without fortune, I was to learn farming vicariously. My early memories are not of long, wind-swept furrows, but of long, dusty counters extending down both sides of a barnlike wooden structure at a corner of the village streets. Brick, in those days, we knew only as a material proper for building chimneys; America had not yet evolved brick-store civilization in the remote provinces.

So with ploughs and planters and distributors and like gear I became familiar, but I knew them only in their new and shining state, fresh from the factory and sticky with vivid red and black paint. Also containers and fertilizers and various farm products were early friends of mine as they journeyed through our establishment between manufacturer and farmer or between farmer and distant market. Likewise the most intricate details of farming lore were of necessity mine, as a chief element of our commercial success consisted in our being able to function at all seasons as a bureau of general agricultural information. The circle around the big box stove that glowed red in the centre of the main storeroom was the farmers’ community club; close within easy range of the saw dust-filled box stood or squatted the men. In the regions farther back, just beyond the firing line, were country-made rockingchairs of unpainted hickory with cowhide seats, where women might rock and soothe fretful babies with ‘store bread’ and at the same time exchange neighborhood gossip. Our inner office was a closed sanctum, to which the farmers were admitted one at a time to receive agricultural advice and commercial guidance.

In short, we functioned not only as merchants but as a community club, ladies’ restroom, and farm demonstration office; only no one had yet invented these high-sounding names. It was all comprehended as ‘gettin’ advances and tradin’.’ Our store also handled small farm products of many kinds. Eggs and chickens (sometimes in combination), butter, fresh and canned vegetables, home-cured meat, lard, beeswax, honey, cane syrup, hides, grain, and seed cotton were one and all legal tender in our rural emporium. Looking back, I realize that this branch of our business was similar to the community or curb market now maintained in many towns for the farmers. The chief difference was that under our old plan the farmer was assured of sale for all he carted to town; the ultimate disposal of the varied assortment was up to the merchant.

Farmer customers depended upon our advice in determining their crop, in selecting seed, and also in respect to the quantity and analysis of fertilizers. Our credit department regulated the extent of the individual’s annual operations, making its decision after due consideration of the integrity and efficiency of the farmer, and often, in addition, an actual inspection of lands and equipment. In fact, in the South, thirty years ago, local agricultural enterprise depended almost entirely upon the ‘factor’ or supply merchant, who accomplished much of the work now carried on by state and Federal departments of agriculture, local and farm-loan banks, and state agricultural colleges. A similar condition probably existed then or earlier in other parts of the country.

I do not claim that our simple system functioned as scientifically as these later and more elaborate agencies, but somehow one heard less of discontent among farmers then than one hears now. For one thing, no one was ever encouraged then to produce more than there was an assured sale for, as the whole arrangement from start to finish was frankly a commercial one. Still, long years of business and personal contact naturally led to personal friendships, so that the supply merchant’s commercial life was humanized by his intimate knowledge of the hopes and disappointments, the triumphs and failures, that formed the simple lives of his agricultural customers.

It was in the offices of successful supply merchants that I first heard preached practical doctrines of crop rotation, home production of home necessities, soil building, and livestock raising on the small farm. Such instruction was not, of course, given from a spirit of pure altruism. In encouraging and enlightening the farmer customer, in extending him judicious credit, the merchant was seeking a profit — his own living. He knew that only by keeping each farmer a going concern could he hold his line of customers. Again, success of the farmers meant the general upbuilding of the community, and so indirectly benefited all business and property interests. But is there any practical assistance given the farmers of to-day without some similar hope of reward, direct or indirect?

Yet, taken by and large, we supply merchants were not viewed as benefactors or even as economic necessities by any class in the community. Even the farmer was taught by politicians of a certain type to regard us as a favored class, who neither toiled with our hands nor knew the heat of the midday sun, but who managed to gather incredible harvests where we had not sown. Many among the professional and political ranks, while personally our friends and neighbors, were prone to hold us up en masse as grasping middlemen who with wiles and cunning robbed the simple sons of the soil. Any instance of sharp practice or of usury on the part of some petty shopkeeper was blazoned far and wide as another bit of evidence that the merchant princes were fattening off the farmer. But, looking back now over a rather wide contact, I can recall no great fortunes and but few competencies amassed from factoring farmers. Bad crop years brought disaster alike to dealer and customer, but there seemed far more often another merchant ready to give the farmer another chance than jobber and banker ready to view lightly the failure of a merchant.

The men engaged in rural mercantile pursuits — that is, in supplying extensive credits to farmers — were as a rule rather above the average for those days in general and business education: many were real community builders. As in all walks of life, there were found good men and bad. Competition and public opinion, however, soon terminated the careers of the flagrantly unscrupulous. Still, as I say, merchants were assumed to be heartless if not actually dishonest; farmers as a class were assumed to be hard-working and honest. After some years of intimate dealing with farmers I grew at times skeptical of this doctrine of universal agricultural integrity; farmers appeared to me like other men — no better, no worse.

For robbers and parasites, the old order of merchants had curious careers, since, as I have said, few made more than a decent living, while the majority ended in business misfortune. Yet no one ever introduced legislative measures for our relief; no one claimed that the merchant who toiled was entitled to a comfortable return. The only laws that I recall concerning us were regulations aimed to limit our profits on our own goods — competition being deemed inadequate to curb us — and the many and detailed rules for picking the commercial bones of those who fell by the wayside. And these pickings were many and constant. In the ceaseless warfare of commercial competition the weak, the inefficient, vanished beneath the seas of commerce, frequently without leaving a trace. Still none appeared to mourn the fallen. It was all a part of the game, and this constant functioning of the survival of the fittest probably maintained the worth and high standards of the old mercantile guild. Lawmakers who wept pearls of oratory at seasons of depression among farmers seemed able to view with equanimity the constant elimination of the merchants. I recall hearing a rural lawyer say, long ago, in commenting on some commercial failure: ‘It’s a good thing to thin them out; where there are so many merchants to be supported they have to charge the farmers higher prices for their goods.’ If consistent in his reasoning, he must have believed that to wipe out all competition and leave but one storekeeper, preferably a dyspeptic old bachelor, in each community would have meant rockbottom prices. His observation first led me to suspect that the legal mind sometimes differs from the commercial mind.

II

At length, as my physical welfare required a life more in the open air, I disposed of my mercantile interests and became a real dirt farmer. The moment that I made the change I discovered that I occupied a new position in the eyes of society — I might almost say of the law. But now, even though I am one of the ‘poor’ farmers, I cannot agree with all popular beliefs concerning my occupation. Let me say here that, while my transactions are now from the outside of the counter, I find that I face as honest a class of citizen as I did when I stood behind it.

I make an effort to conduct my farming operations with the same degree of prudence and judgment that I exercised in my store, and, taken year in and year out, I am making about the same income. Now, however, it is far easier for me to save my money. My dwelling is larger and better equipped than the one I owned when a merchant, but it is situated several miles outside the city limits. Not only is the tax rate lower here, but I soon discovered that no mere farmhouse is supposed to be returned at as high a value as a town house of the same cost. In all this there is of course a considerable saving to the owner, but a far greater saving is in the matter of donations to public causes. When I was a merchant hardly a day passed but that I was asked to subscribe to some worthy object — to anything, to everything. It might be a new church (regardless of my own denomination), a lodge supper, a Chautauqua, or a new dog for the village blind man. I said that I was ‘asked,’ but that is a mere figure of speech; I would be gently but firmly held up by some good customer with the silent support of many other good customers. ‘See the Merchants First’ seems to be the slogan of those who raise funds in small towns. For one thing, a merchant is always easy to reach and easy to scare; and should one attempt the excuse of being without any cash, which might readily exempt a professional man, the committee can so often manage with something ‘out of stock.’

But after the public learned that I had turned farmer I was never again called on. If subscriptions were mentioned in my presence my inability to respond was graciously taken for granted. Even my own church treasurer expressed great astonishment that I should continue my former contribution toward the minister’s salary now that I was no longer ‘in business.’ Again, I find it a great satisfaction to realize that now all my fellow citizens, from Congressmen down, believe that as an agriculturist I am entitled to an assured and comfortable living for myself and my family. Not even my best friends seemed to feel this way about me when I was a mere merchant. And I find that I acquire merit now because I am supposed to be obliged to work harder than most other men. This attitude puzzled me at first, as now I take almost a full holiday from farm work on Saturdays, whereas this used to be a day of intense effort, often until midnight. Also there are certain seasons when there is almost nothing to be done on the farm aside from merely keeping the place together. Then I realized that merchants and other business men are only considered as working when at their places of business and during business hours. A farmer, on the other hand, having no set hours, is always at work, — that is, he is always a farmer, — one hundred and forty-four full hours each week, whether he is ploughing, trading horses, talking with friends, driving a Ford, or taking a nap.

Another saving is in the matter of sales licenses. I was once charged a good stiff sum annually for the privilege of selling my own goods in my own building on which I paid city taxes. Now the public generously provides me with a well-placed curb market — a shelter under which I may park my Ford, set up a booth, and dispose of my surplus small farm products. I am even better off than were the farmers of the earlier days. They possibly paid the local merchant a slight extra profit to cover the agricultural and commercial advice that they received along with their supplies. Now the public is taxed to pay experts who stand ready to assist me in any detail of my vocation. Should local agents be unable to cope with my problems, I can wire the distant state extension bureau and special experts will be sent to assist me in the field. A thoughtful Government has arranged that I can borrow money on longer terms and at lower rates than my merchant friends. When the market makes a sudden advance I am free to take full advantage of it without the slightest fear that I may be accused of profiteering, for who can estimate the cost of a commodity that I ‘make myself.’

Formerly during periods of business depression I worried over my affairs, for I well knew that failure meant death to one’s mercantile career. Now I feel that wiser heads than mine are mindful of my needs. If the necessity should arise Congress would even repeal those troublesome old laws of supply and demand that tend to lower my living standards and would hoist the products of the nation’s farms by the nation’s boot-straps. At least it would discuss doing such things, and such talk in high places helps one through hard seasons. Also it is cheering to feel that the failure of one’s crop is always ascribed to extraneous influences — the odium attaches to Providence and not to the business management of the farm.

So, having played a part in the game, as one might say, from both sides of the counter, I am convinced that the farmers constitute the privileged class in our American democracy.

III

But, lest my picture prove too alluring and cause a back-to-the-farm movement that will depopulate our centres of industry and commerce, let me hasten to add that there are still some slight adjustments necessary before Mother Earth becomes an agricultural heaven — even here in favored America. I must confess that there is discontent among us. One cause of this is the sadness of numbers — the knowledge that there are really too many of us. The law of the survival of the fittest, the weeding out of the weak and inefficient , that works so constantly in the commercial world should have fuller play in culling the tillers of the soil. Fewer operating concerns with a more easily controlled output would prove a cure for many of our present agricultural ills.

In industry, efficiency in production and distribution must of necessity be the most vital consideration. The welfare of worker, even of individual plant, while important, must occupy a secondary place. A plant or a mercantile establishment, poorly situated or inefficiently run, must be scrapped and the workers must seek other fields. But not so in our game of agricultural production. No one weeps or writes verses about a closed shop or an abandoned factory; but a deserted farm is regarded as a pathetic object to excite the pen of poets and the brush of artists, not as a mere economic error. Probably the staple crops of America could be produced more efficiently and economically through vast concentration of capital at suitable and strategic points, employing thousands of laborers at good wages on full time. But such a suggestion would bring even more protest in behalf of the small, independent, landowning farmer whom such a system would eliminate than was lavished on the individual worker who vanished at the coming of the modern textile plant. Personally I do not know that I should fancy it myself. Yet is there anyone to-day outside of a small band in India who desires to turn the world back to cottage looms and spinning frames?

Possibly it is because of my early commercial environment that I still tend to look upon farming in America as but one of our big business enterprises — many scattered workers engaged in the production of a certain line of goods. It seems to me that the public is burdened too greatly in supplying us with experts and equipment in the producing department of our business for the attention that is given to our rather inefficient selling end.

I read recently that a Western railway president said: ‘A neighboring state is spending $300,000 a year for county agents to educate the farmer in the science of increased production. It is not spending a dollar to educate the consumer either at home or abroad in the use of these products.’ Let it be a question of increasing my production per acre, of making two blades of grass (pasture grass, of course), six bolls of cotton, or ten big potatoes grow in place of one, and I have at my command the entire departments of agriculture, state and national. They will supply me with endless data, and, if necessary, experts will come to assist me in the field. A convincing argument for the crushing expenditure for hard-surfaced roads is that they enable the farmers to widen the radii of their activity. Certain bulky and heavy commodities could, a few years ago, be grown only in close proximity to railway shipping points; now, with good highways and motor trucks, there is hardly any limit to one’s field of operation. The result has been a slump in the price of farm lands in the formerly favorably situated sections and greater uncertainty in the profits to be expected in these once restricted crops. I am taught year in and year out that to be a better farmer I must produce more — and I am but one of the vast agricultural multitude in these United States.

But, curiously, I am finding increasing difficulty in turning my enlarged output profitably into cash. Confronted with a similar situation in my mercantile days, I should have promptly reduced my purchases and my stock; surplus stock meant financial death. But now, thanks to the paternalistic care of the Government in the producing department of our business, our potatoes, cabbage, oranges, apples, and other staples are not only of better quality but, on an average, in greater volume than ever before in history. In growing, gathering, packing, and even transportation the Government seems to have almost boundless power to assist us, but here its freedom of action terminates. The actual selling to the consumer of our products remains beyond the sphere of governmental activity and is a purely commercial transaction between individuals. Thus, in the end, the farmer is dependent upon his traditional foe, the merchant — commission, wholesale, retail, pushcart.

Realizing this, it is a comfort for me personally to feel that these commercial men are just folks like us farmers — not human devils with horns and tails, but fellow citizens trying to make honest livings as the necessary connecting link between the man who grows the potato and the man who eats it.

The basic trouble is that this ultimate commercial end of agriculture is not arranged on a sliding scale, but is equipped and managed only to handle the output of the average season. When some given commodity — say, apples, potatoes, oranges — happens to fetch a fancy price one season, every grower in America whose soil and situation will enable him to produce this particular article bends every effort to increasing his yield to the limit. If the hope of the multitude comes to happy fruition the article appears next season in vastly more than normal quantities, normal trade channels are clogged, and the grower sees his visioned extra profits vanish and very frequently must dump a large portion of his surplus.

Commission houses and retailers in the United States who handle a given farm product are adequately supplied by a normal crop. Our sudden abnormal offerings overtax their physical distributing equipment, and certainly it would be poor business judgment for them either to widen their circle of activity to a point which they could not under ordinary conditions maintain or to open new concerns to assist us in moving an occasional bumper crop when we can give absolutely no guaranty of continued volume.

Still I know that beyond the sphere, the fixed circle, of these commercial distributors there are thousands of potential consumers who would gladly use our surplus at prices that would net us a pleasing profit, as the unusual volume is made with but little increased overhead. Yet how is the producer to make contact with these scattered potential consumers without disrupting the established channels of distribution upon which the producer’s normal commercial welfare depends ? So far, the most ambitious projects of coöperative marketing suggested either are purely local in their scope or else attempt simply to draw producer one step nearer to consumer, but throw him in the end on the commercial retailer.

A few years ago a neighbor of mine farther South had a bumper crop of oranges on his hands, but no buyers. In the shops of a near-by city he observed oranges retailing at an excellent price; so, after figuring on the transportation charges, he found that he could ship several cars to this and neighboring cities, employ men to sell them by the box or by the dozen direct from the cars at much less than the retailers were asking, and still have a fair margin left. In every place, however, the city authorities demanded a license for the protection of their local dealers, and this license was just enough to cancel his hoped-for profit. No one can criticize the action of the cities for the protection of their own merchants; yet because of it my friend dumped his surplus crop — nor did oranges become the poor man’s meal in the city.

In my mercantile days, no matter how attractive the profit on some article, I never planned to increase my stock save as I saw probable sale. As a farmer I admit that my policy has undergone a change; of whatever sells well this season I strive blindly to produce all that I can next year, and so do most of my brothers of the soil. If we all succeed we all fail. We are told that growing food and other raw materials for the use of man is the chief aim and end of our noble calling. Our sales force is a class of alien, commercial men who are, we tell one another, making excessive profits and are hostile to our interests. We attempt to follow a phase of commercial life under modern complex economic conditions and yet strive to keep hold of antiquated, sentimental traditions handed down from a noncommercial age. Our many failures we ascribe to anything under the sun save unsound economic thinking on our part; and instead of seeking the remedy within, as would men caught in a similar dilemma in the financial or industrial world, we clamor for help from the only other line of activity that is not conducted by business men according to business rules — politics.

Politics, like farming, is supposed to function independently of modern economic and commercial rules, and this may account for the close bond that seems to exist between them. The unsuccessful farmer appeals to the lawmaker, and the politician is seldom unmindful of the trials and hardships of the ‘poor farmer.’

A farmer is in reality the owner and chief executive of his industrial enterprise, yet he objects to incurring the risks and responsibilities that are the lot of other executives. He represents capital, yet craves the sheltered dependence enjoyed by labor in other branches of enterprise. He boasts of his independence, yet craves paternalistic oversight, an excess of which has reduced the once noble red man to the blanket Indian. In our production department we have become almost wards of government; in our distribution department we are thrown on our own in a cold, hard commercial world; and the results are increasingly unhappy.

It has been frequently stated that no people has successfully maintained agricultural civilization in the face of world competition without slaves or peasants, but America declares that she will have neither. Her agricultural hope, then, lies in superorganization and the machine. Will there be a place in this new order for the small farmer?