CONDITIONS ACUTE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 23, 23 December 1932, Page 2

CONDITIONS ACUTE.

American farmers may be in acute distress, but conditions in the larger cities are infinitely worse. Fanners are at least able to get enough food, and that apparently is what is behind the vigorous “back to the farm” movement sweeping especially through the Central and Western States. Mr Wood Netherland, president of the Federal Land Bank of St. Louis, says the new year will-see the United States farming population as great as ever it was. The last two years’ exodus from the city to the soil had offset the movement to the city during the decade ended in 1930, when the ambition of nearlv every farm lad was to share the big wages of the city industrial workers. Mr Roosevelt’s new farm relief plans are crystallising into a domestic allotment scheme. By it the producer will be entitled to sui adjustment certificate on his marketed percentage of domestic consumption of wheat, cotton, tobacco and ling?. It will provide for 42 cents (Is 9d) a bushel on wheat, 5 cents (2Jcl) a pound on cotton. 4 cents (2d) a pound on tobacco, and 2 cents (Id) a pound on hogs. The idea is to give the producer the benefit of the foreign tariff in the domestic market, and to let the American consumer pay the cost. However, this proposal has a long road to travel before becoming law.