The People's Voice

AID FOR FARM TENANTS.
OWNERS SOLUTION TO MIGRANT PROBLEMS

WASHINGTON.- (FP)-Warning that the spectacle of thousands of families roaming the country in search of work is a sign of serious trouble, Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace laid before the senate civil liberties committee May 2 suggestions for meeting the migrant problem.

Wallace suggested that steps be taken to give effective assistance to farm tenants who want to become farm owners and to assist farm owners in debt to remain farm owners.

Supplementing these, he said, should be a long-term public work program in the over-crowded rural areas. He expressed the hope that congress in the near future will consider the advisability of such a program.

The problems of farm labor, Wallace declared, arise directly out of the wastage of the soil, years of ruinous farm prices, the disappearance of foreign markets, unsound systems of tenure, an alarming increase in farm tenancy, and the rapid development of a large-scale industrialized type of agriculture.

More tractors were sold in 1937 alone, he declared, than were in use on all the farms in the U. S. in 1920.

By 1938 there were about 1,528,000 tractors on American farms, more than a third of which had been purchased within the last three years.

In one Alabama county, he estimated, in which only eight tractors were in use six years ago, there were 260 tractors in 1937 and each tractor pushed from one to five tenant families off the land.

In order to meet all the normal requirements of farm production, Wallace said, 1,600,000 fewer workers are needed now than 10 years ago.

He cited a study of the Natl. Resources Committee which showed that in 1936, more than 1,700,000 farm families had an average income of less than $500 a year including all they grew for themselves.

"In other words, there were about 8,500,000 persons trying to struggle along on an average income of about $2 a week each, or $10 per family," he declared.

To assist present tenants to become farm owners, Wallace advocated expansion of the tenant loan program as rapidly as good land at fair prices becomes available.

Farm owners can and should be assisted by a refinancing of excessive farm mortgage debts which at present threaten foreclosure and loss of farms.

"At present, thousands of competent, hard-working farmers, with the best kind of attitude towards paying their obligations, are delinquent and threatened with foreclosure through no fault of their own," Wallace told the committee.

"Bad weather, farm depression, and soft credit policies of the 1920's have placed them in a position where, under present law, there would seem to be no effective means of preventing them from being added to the ranks of the unemployed," he added.

He endorsed legislation introduced by Rep. Jones (D., Tex.) and Sens. Wheeler (D., Mont.), Bankhead (D., Ala.) and LaFollette (Prog., Wis.) providing for means of refinancing farm mortgages.

A long term public works program, needed to supplement these measures, would provide a place where "idle men and idle money could be put to work with profit for all," he concluded.

"In the south alone, for example, thousands of men could find useful work for more than a decade rebuilding the forests, controlling floods, and restoring eroded land.

"Every penny spent on a program of this kind would be a wise investment in capital assets which have been wasted shamefully for generations. Every day we permit such wastage to continue we are creating new migrants, building a new backlog of poverty."

Wallace was the first witness before the senate civil liberties committee as it started a series of hearings to get background testimony to its investigation of California migratory farm labor, already concluded.