Chapter 16

In a similar manner imported seeds, plants, and plant products are inspected to prevent the importation of plant diseases and plant pests, and also to prevent adulteration of plant products. Warehouses are inspected and licenses granted to those that are suitable for the proper storage of cotton, grains, tobacco, flaxseed, and wool. The Department enforces the laws that fix the standards for grading cotton and grain, and licenses grain inspectors. It also enforces the Food and Drugs Act (see Chapter XX).

Topics for investigation:

Difficulties experienced by farmers in your locality in marketing produce or livestock.

Assistance received from the United States Department of Agriculture to overcome the difficulties.

Experiments in cooperative marketing in your locality.

Products of your locality that require storage facilities. Adequacy of storage facilities.

Transportation needs of your locality. Improvements in transportation facilities in recent years.

Consult your county agent, or write to the Office of Farm Management, for publications relating to farm management, farm accounting, etc.

Discuss with farmers of your acquaintance the extent to which they find farm accounts and farm records useful.

Diseases of livestock prevalent in your locality and state. Experiments in cooperation to eradicate these diseases. Assistance received from the Department of Agriculture.

Crops of foreign origin raised in your locality. Countries from which introduced.

Destructive plant diseases and plant pests of your locality. Efforts to combat them.

Importance of bird migrations to the farmers of your locality. Extent of protection afforded birds. How you cooperate in this matter.

Importance of these various farmers' problems to the people in town--the housekeeper, the merchant, the manufacturer, the railroad companies.

Cases of animal quarantine occurring in your locality.

Why warehouses for food products, cotton, etc., should be licensed. What "licensing" means.

How grain, cotton, or other products are "graded." The reason for grading. Why there needs to be a law on the subject.

SERVICE OF OTHER DEPARTMENTS OF GOVERNMENT

While the business interests of the farmer, and indeed many of his other interests, such as health, education, and social life, are especially looked after by the Department of Agriculture, he shares with all other citizens the services of all the other departments of government, each of which also has its elaborate organization (see Chapter XXVII). It is the Treasury Department, for example, acting under authority given to it by Congress, that provides the people with their system of money and with a banking system, both of which are great cooperative devices. The Department of Commerce serves the farmer directly by discovering markets for his products in every part of the world, and indirectly by everything it does to promote the country's commerce. The rural mail delivery, the parcel post, and the motor truck service of the Post Office Department are of untold value to the farmer (see Chapter XVIII). The Department of the Interior has supervision over the public lands, the reclamation of arid lands, and the development of mineral resources (Chapters XIV, XV).

THE QUESTION OF LABOR SUPPLY

The question of labor supply is one of the most serious questions which the farmer has to face. It is one that he must help to solve for himself:

As soon as work on the farms is organized, and employment is made steady for all help, just so soon will a better class of laborers be attracted to the farm. As the farm-owner wishes life to be free from eternal drudgery for himself and family, yielding the fruits of happiness, leisure, and culture, he would do well to consent and arrange to give the farm hand who shares the shelter of his roof a fair chance at the same benefits. The laborer wants regular hours, a chance for recreation, a good place to live in, and enough wages to maintain a family according to American standards. [Footnote: W.J. Dougan and M.W. Leiserson in "Rural Social Problems," Fourth Annual Report Wisconsin Country Life Conference, quoted in Nourse, AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS pp. 258-260.]

But there are aspects of the labor problem over which the farmer by his own unaided efforts can have little control. One of these is the problem of bringing the laborer and the job together (see