Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/269

 mated total revenue for all farmers and farm-owners of $8,111,000,000; and allows rent or interest on a total investment of $77,900,000,000. Taking the average farm family as three effective workers, this is about $73 per capita, per annum for labor, as against an average of $1000 per capita, per annum for domestic servants. If the figures of Mr. H. A. Wallace covering estimated revenue for 1920, quoted by the National Bureau, are more nearly correct, namely, $3,900,000,000, then, after paying rent and interest, the farmer’s family went heavily into debt; for the combined rent and interest bill was $5,116,000,000. It is a matter of common knowledge that very few farmers in the years 1920, 1921 and 1922 made sufficient margin to pay their taxes. It is hardly possible to overstate the case. For the sake of a judicial review, let us take the temperate summing up of the National Bureau of Economic Research: “Even though the same money will buy considerably more of certain commodities in the country than in the city, it nevertheless appears that the average farmer can scarcely with justice be considered a pampered child of fortune.”

The gist of the whole matter is this: we have an illogical system of taxation based originally on the sweating of the agricultural laborer—and we have not changed it. Instead of taxing control of value (area × population-density) we continue to tax effort itself for the benefit of the urban controllers of value (area × population-density). The farmer is grudgingly given extended credits; he is given free garden seeds; and he is given a mild scolding when he organizes an “agricultural bloc.” His minor grievance is a denial of the right to have what little value he does control officially certified; but his major grievance is a burden of direct and indirect taxation out of all proportion to anything but his blind and unrewarded labor.

Owing to the invisible exactions of our tariff, the farmer also suffers from the most iniquitous tax that can be devised, namely, a tax on his gross output, quite regardless of the fact that there may be no net margin. This may be plainer if we look at ourselves as we look at others.

The United States Department of Agriculture, under date of January 6, 1923, quotes one of its experts, Mr. Louis G. Michael, Economist in Foreign Agriculture, who has recently made a study of agricultural economic conditions in Europe