Page:Oscar Ameringer - Socialism for the Farmer (1912).djvu/13

 Yes, brother Farmer, you sell cheap enough and the city man pays high enough, but the benefit of high prices for farm products in the city go not to you and the low cost of farm products in the country are of no earthly benefit to the city man. The difference is swallowed up by the numerous fat men on the many bridges that Stand between producer and consumer.

Since the farmer has no control over the price of his products his income is determined by people who have all the interest in the world to see him get along with as little as possible.

Why don't people go back to the soil? Why do they persist in living in crowded, noisy tenements instead of going back to the country where they can hear the song of the meadow lark, inhale God's fresh air and drink fresh spring water?

Well, there is nothing wrong with the warble of the meadow lark. Fresh air and good water are plentiful enough in the country, and if farmers could exchange the notes of the meadow lark with the notes held by the bankers, or buy cultivators and manure spreaders with hunks of fresh air or buckets of cool spring water, life in the country would be one Sweet old song. But the fact is the farmer holds a monopoly on the hardest way of making a living ever invented. He works longer hours than the city worker and gets less pay. People who are continually harping about the desirability of life on the farm may do well to study the figures compiled by Uncle Sam,

Out of this princely income the farmer pays taxes, interest, insurance, pays for fertilizers, machinery, tools, repairs and in the case of the 17 per cent of farms where the income is $1000.00 and over, a goodly amount goes in wages for farm hands. From these figures it may easily be seen that the farmer is even closer to the minimum of subsistence than the wage worker.

Says A. M. Simons in his, very able book, "The American Farmer:" "When it comes to amount of income, all authorities agree that the farmers and the wage workers are alike in receiving little more than a subsistence wage." Prof. C. P. Walker in a discussion before the American Economic Asso-