Part 8 (2/2)
ancient terms such as ”culling” became ”selective breeding,” and even the animals were referred to as machines, which if ”poorly constructed must be ... discarded by the good breeder.”[193] To independent-minded farmers, who, as Sinclair Lewis had observed, jealously guarded the ability to escape the mill and turmoil of the city, this industrialization seemed the ultimate compromise. The findings of the Commission to study the Condition of the Farmers of Virginia (1930) show the rural values of a most fundamental character to be those most prized by the agriculturalist:
Among these are: a) The advantages of the country for bringing up a family ... a greater sharing of responsibilities, a closer knit, more stable family life.... b) The satisfactions ... of contacts with forces of nature, of caring for plants and animals, and of seeing them grow.... c) Greater freedom from various types of restraints, including somewhat greater control over time and freedom of personal action; also less intense struggle to keep up with or ahead of others.... d) somewhat greater freedom from illness, together with a better prospect of attaining old age. e) Greater security against unemployment as well as less prospect of falling into absolute want.[194]
Yet in the post-World War I period the farmer had increasingly to commercialize and mechanize his business to remain solvent and to ”citify” his life, destroying in numerous instances the standards he held dear.
”I used to 'farm' some and made money at it; now I'm 'engaged in the pursuit of agriculture' and can't make ends meet,” commented one U. S.
Secretary of Agriculture, echoing the sentiments of many small landowners.[195] The new farm mechanization was, in many cases, not particularly well adapted to the family farm in this period.
Gasoline-powered tractors, harvesters and other equipment worked most economically on the large, level acres of midwestern farms, and the east coast farmer with modest landholdings could not hope to compete on the market with the streamlined efficiency of western farms. Mechanized farming was also capital intensive. Besides the initial cost of equipment there were expenses for maintenance and fuel. Whereas the farmer had been able to raise feed for horses or mules inexpensively, he could not grow gasoline.
Farmers usually had to borrow money to purchase equipment and sometimes they over-indulged. ”I know one or two that did,” said Joseph Beard.
When you have several thousand dollars invested in machinery, and you only use it three, five, ten, fifteen days a year, the rest of the time it's sitting idle ... it would have been ... better if they had hired their work done from someone else rather than put that much into it.[196]
More cash was needed to buy manufactured goods as the farm became less self-supporting, but prices for raw materials remained low during the agricultural slump of the 1920s and 1930s. ”Agriculture was much less distressed when the farm was a self-supporting home,” reflected the _Was.h.i.+ngton Star_:
But when factories began producing commodities in quant.i.ty the farmer could buy them easier than he could make them at home.
At first glance this looks like an admirable situation. But the hitch arose when the farmer found himself unable to maintain a fair basis of exchange.[197]
The result was that many farms of long-standing owners.h.i.+p had to be mortgaged. In the s.p.a.ce of one year (between 1924 and 1925) county mortgages rose a dramatic 30% and by 1940 they had risen another 20%.[198] Worse yet, a small but significant number of farmers and farm laborers were beginning to leave the countryside altogether to work in the city.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Kidwell farm and Floris vicinity shown in an aerial photograph taken in 1937. Photo, National Archives and Records Service.]
The county's improved transportation system was partially responsible for this. Access to markets had been facilitated by surfaced roads but an easy avenue to city jobs was also opened. Short and regular hours, higher pay and city amenities were strong attractions to the farmer who had had to work ”from daybreak to backbreak” for a scanty living.[199]
In recognition of this problem, Derr wrote plaintively in his annual report of 1925:
The worst feature is the fact that our small farmers in the main have such a hard time to get along that many of them are actually training their children along more lucrative lines, and occupations other than farming. Many of these farmers have sold their farms or abandoned their leases and moved into the cities and are earning more money per day than they made per week in the country. Another important factor in this exodus from the farm is the fact that so many of our farm boys with good health and strength, and not afraid of hard work are making good in the city.[200]
Continuing on, Derr quoted one discouraged farmer: ”One of my daughters is making 22 dollars a week, and my wife is talking of getting a job too. My wife can earn more in the city than I am getting so I guess I will take care of the house and let them go to work.”[201]
Ironically, additions such as electrification, intended to improve the rural standard of living, seem to have done little to check the migration. USDA and United Nations studies show that the very amenities which should have made life in the country more attractive often resulted in a large flow of the population towards urban areas, a trend which continues today in developing countries. Even increased education, which had as its goal professional quality in agricultural training, sometimes simply broadened the farmer to possibilities outside his own realm. Sociologists and agriculturalists have found these repercussions puzzling and have not discovered clear-cut reasons for them. Perhaps with country and city life being ever h.o.m.ogenized by the use of radios, automobiles, consumer goods and the interflow of people, the step of leaving the farm to try city life seemed less foreign and formidable. In Fairfax County the proximity of Was.h.i.+ngton and Alexandria made it especially tempting.[202]
It was not only farm owners who left home for city jobs, but the farm laborers. The effect of this exodus was devastating to the county's small farmer. Initially the scarcity of help meant cutting back additional farm activities, the products of which were not earmarked for the market. Rebecca Middleton remembered, for instance, that farmers stopped raising their own hogs chiefly because of the difficulty of hiring laborers to help with butchering.[203] As labor shortages grew, the available help raised their prices significantly, eventually outpricing themselves for most farmers. As Joseph Beard observed, this trend did not affect Fairfax County in a really dramatic way until after World War II, ”by virtue of the fact that most farmers raised anywhere from two to five children. Most every farmer's hired hand raised from two to five children. Now there just wasn't room on this farm to employ ten to twelve children.” With such large families the drain to Was.h.i.+ngton did not so clearly affect the farms at the outset.[204]
Nevertheless, the trend retains its significance, for the high cost of labor, which contributed greatly to the demise of the self-supporting farm, had its roots in the optimistic improvement of transportation systems in the second and third decades of the century.[205]
The improved roads carried yet another liability: an increase in land value and the consequent rise in taxation. In 1923 the average acre in the county was worth $5 to $10; it had more than doubled in value by the end of that decade.[206] Taxes rose accordingly. The editors of the _Fairfax Herald_ complained in 1926 that in addition to the cost of living which had risen 78% from 1913, they paid federal taxes which were 200% over the pre-World War I figure.[207] The farmer also carried the burden of cost for his much-desired roads. In addition to bond issues, there was a Virginia state gasoline tax which fell heavily on the farmer with his gas-driven machinery and need to haul produce to market.[208]
Taxation, like labor, machinery and manufactured goods, called for additional cash, which was more and more difficult for the family farmer to raise. ”There's only one thing that has driven the dairy industry out of Fairfax County, and that's taxes,” concluded Holden Harrison. ”The land was suitable, the location was suitable, but who's going to run a dairy on $10,000 an acre land?”[209]
An editorial in the _Fairfax Herald_ for September 6, 1935, reflects well the changes seen on farms of the depression era.
Housewives throughout the county are becoming more and more incensed over the steadily rising prices of foodstuffs, particularly meats.... In many places housewives are actually boycotting merchants who attempt to sell meat at the present price level. The blame for the present rise in prices lies directly at the door of the Raw Dealers and Brain Trusters. These smart young gentlemen had a theory and in pursuance of that theory they slaughtered a great number of hogs, in order to keep prices at an unnaturally high level. They succeeded only too well.[210]
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