The Bones of Plenty (45 page)

Another man stood up. “How
can
I plant less? What am I going to do for cash? You tell me what to use instead of cash and I’ll go along with you.” He sat down, then added, “Maybe it’s time to get us a printing press and make our own.”

“The government understands that you can’t survive without a certain minimum of cash.
[Minimum!]
I’m here to try to show you how you can get your hands on that minimum and still work toward a better balance between the supply and demand in your market. The government knows that you also don’t like relief. Why should you? You’ve lived independently all your lives and your fathers before you were independent. The government is proud that men like you keep struggling to stay independent.
[And also the government doesn’t like making relief payments, does it?]
I have the contracts here with me tonight that will guarantee you a certain benefit payment next summer in addition to whatever cash you get from the acreage you leave in production. Shall we get down to business?
["Benefit payment” They do their best to make it sound like relief!]

“What happens if we sign and then wheat prices go way up? If the Kansas wheat crop is even worse next spring?” somebody asked. “Your measly checks ain’t going to look like a heck of a lot next to what we
could
get next fall.”

“Let me outline this program for you and then we’ll have all your questions. How’s that?” The county agent plowed ahead. “But in regard to
your
question, let me say that any man who signs an agreement to take a certain amount of acreage out of production and then reneges on his agreement is certainly being a poor neighbor, besides being dishonest.
[Do you think we’ll fall for this grade-school sermon? Especially from a politician?]
Now, first of all, for sixty or seventy years the farmers have been complaining about how the middlemen get too much of the food dollar. The railroads’ rates were always too high, their land grants were exorbitant —”

“Well they
were!”
somebody shouted. “They are!”

“All right, so they were. So the most important thing about this acreage-control plan is that the middleman gets soaked for it. These Triple A payments are coming out of the processing taxes the government levies on all refiners and bakers. This is so the wheat farmer can get more for his work without passing the cost on to the consumer. We all agree that the consumer cannot consume enough to keep you in business. Right?”

“Oh, George!” Lester called. “Did you bring a shovel? I clean forgot mine, and it’s gettin’ so thick in here! Do you realize the price of bread went up two months ago and this fella hasn’t heard about it yet?”

“All right, now!” Finnegan cried. “You just let me give you some estimates here. We expect to take in at least five hundred million dollars a year from these middlemen, and it’s all going to come back to
you!
Now just let me read you part of a bulletin I have in my hand here. I just got a shipment of these”—Lester stood up, made a few shoveling motions, and sat down—“and I hope you’ll all pick one up when we get down to the business of filling out these contracts, but I’d like to just pick out some high points here: ‘One, the total volume of wheat production in the United States must be reduced and kept within effective demand.’ And … let’s see here—‘Three, the farmers who cooperate in the program must, by reason of their cooperating, be given advantages which noncooperators would not have.’”

“There
he’s got us!” George boomed out. He couldn’t see letting Lester grab the floor all the time. “Your well goes dry or your feed runs out and you either sell your stock to the government or shoot it for coyote food. So you go to your county agent, and he says, ‘
You
didn’t buy my acreage contract; I don’t buy your cows.’ Or you tell your kindly county agent, ‘I hear the government’s helping us fellows to dig new wells.’ ‘I don’t find your name here on my list,’ says Mr. Agent. ‘You go dig your own hole.’”

“For Christ’s sake, let’s hear the man out!” Stuart hissed.

So Rachel’s drunkard baby brother was going to act pious and embarrassed, was he? George would have to clean his clock for him one of these days. He knew it.

Finnegan went on as though there had been no interruptions at all. He had decided to pretend their unanswerable questions did not exist. What allegiance did a man owe to a government that sent him a donkey like this?

“I’m skipping along here …” said the county agent. “ ‘Five, production control should be accomplished through acreage control. Seven, the purchasing power of the United States wheat grower’s wheat must be restored to where it was in the base period, or parity period, of the prewar years of nineteen-oh-nine to nineteen-fourteen.’

“Now, there you have the outlines of the thinking and planning we’ve done since the new President took over. At least you’ll have to admit that we’ve been getting some action started. I know this has all been in the newspapers, but this bulletin pulls it together for you, and you really ought to take one. It’s
your
tax money that printed it. If you know a neighbor who didn’t come tonight, I wish you’d take one for him.

“Now of course you will be expected to sign a three-year contract. That’s partly to enable the government to plan ahead and not to exceed the production that will take care of our domestic needs and our export quota. But it’s also partly to encourage
you
to do something with the acreage you take out of wheat. If you take it out for that long, perhaps you’ll build it up for good pasture or hay. That will be good for you and good for the land.

“Supposing you averaged a hundred and thirty acres in wheat for the last three years. We’ll take the three-year average, from 1929 to 1932—be glad we don’t include this year’s bad crop—and we’ll base your payments on that. Around here, the average for those three good years is ten point five bushels to the acre—last year it was only six point eight, as you know too well. So—if you withheld thirty acres, figuring at roughly ten bushels to the acre, you’d be paid for three hundred bushels that you never lifted a finger nor spent a dime to produce. We’re going to soak the millers thirty cents a bushel and twenty-eight of that will come to you. Three hundred times twenty-eight cents is eighty-four dollars you’d get in a government check after I’d been out to verify your acreage for you. Eighty-four dollars is almost as much as some of you netted this year from your
entire
crop, isn’t it? And twenty-eight cents a bushel is more than you
netted
this year, isn’t it?”

“You know all the answers!” somebody yelled. “Tell them to my landlord!”

“We know that’s a problem. We hope we can convince you to try to show your landlords that this is the best approach for all of you.”

“You’re
right down there next-door neighbor to
my
landlord,” George said. “
You
tell him! You send your little booklets on over to
him.”

Finnegan was trying to shout over them all. “Now that I’ve given you this outline and this example, are we ready to get down to a real study of the contracts? I’ll pass them out to you so you can follow along with me.”

As he came down the aisle, Lester started in on him again. “I want to know how much acreage the Guardian Trust Company is going to cut and why they ought to get any tax money at all for running a bunch of farmers off their land.”

“Let’s not worry about the Cuardian Trust any more tonight,” Finnegan snapped. “The Guardian Trust is not coming to the government for relief checks and free groceries, and the Guardian Trust does not have any bologna-grade cattle it might have to sell in a hurry!”

He was letting them have it now, after he had ignored George saying the same thing. This was what the little bulletin meant by “cooperating” farmers getting “advantages” not available to “noncooperators.” This was what every man who read the newspapers already knew—and they all read the newspapers. Furthermore, they all knew that County Agent Finnegan, like every other county agent in seventeen hundred other wheat counties, had his finger in up to the elbow in the administration of practically any government money. So just who was the county agent trying to kid, anyway?

“I almost forgot,” said Finnegan. He had retreated to the stage after handing out his forms. “I wanted to mention some other important items. Maybe you can give me half an ear while you look over those papers. I have another bulletin here.” He held it up and patted a pile on the long table beside him. “It’s of interest to everybody, but particularly to the ladies. I hope you men will all take a copy home. I want to read you just a short paragraph here: ‘In far too many instances the farmhouse provides only meager facilities for sheltering and feeding the family. It contributes little toward making home life pleasant. Heretofore, farm savings have largely gone back into the farm to increase production. It would be sound economy to put an increased proportion into the home. Such a course, besides raising the farm standard of living, would harmonize with the need for controlling production.’ Now that’s why I’m sorry not to see more ladies here tonight,” he shouted over the hoots in the hall. “I’m sorry that more ladies aren’t here to pick up these bulletins I have on how to brighten up your house. There are lots of little tricks here that use relatively inexpensive materials.”

“Like flour sacks?” somebody called.

“And,” Finnegan went on, “there are some tricks here for the men, too. I especially want to point out this little three-page booklet on an economy bathroom that you can install yourself for as little as a hundred and fifty dollars.” There were more hoots.

“A hundred and fifty dollars and some labor, and you would be rid of your privy—no more of those long cold walks in your nightshirt through six feet of snow on a chilly winter’s night.” There was no laughter. No city man with nice inside plumbing had any right to make jokes about those walks. And besides, they weren’t really so funny.

He hurried on. “And a hundred and fifty dollars and the labor put into improving your house instead of producing wheat that nobody wants would help raise the price of wheat and raise the value of your property at the same time.”

“Then the taxes and rent would go up! Every time I fix up my place, the government soaks my landlord and he soaks
me
!” somebody said.

Another man observed, “By golly, I’d have to lay a new floor before I put in any of that heavy stuff. I can just see the old woman now, fixture and all, falling through into the storm-cellar.”

“If I had a hundred and fifty dollars to spend on a bathroom, I’d buy a car that’d run, and get out of here,” the other replied.

“Hell,” the first argued, “if you had a hundred and fifty dollars to spend on a bathroom, you’d be so rich you wouldn’t
want
to get out.”

Finnegan had lost his audience again—this time because they were speculating on how they would use that much cash left over after simple survival. George was digging another well and installing a windmill so he could stop pumping by hand every drop of water he used. Then with the next hundred and fifty dollars he’d put in a power pump to get the water up to the house and back to the garden. Then, when he had water flowing to the house, perhaps it would be time to think about putting in a bathroom. But the water would not flow to the house unless the fine free-enterprise power company would string a line out his road. There sat Will, with his house wired for electricity ever since he’d built it almost thirty years ago. Will was still waiting, and it looked like he was going to wait a long time yet. So perhaps the second hundred and fifty dollars had just better be applied toward a tractor, after all.

“Well,” Finnegan yelled, “maybe this
is
a little optimistic for this year, but it’s the sort of thing the government would like you to keep in mind and plan for. It’s the sort of thing you can look forward to, if only we can get this overproduction whittled down and the prices boosted up. In the meantime, there are these other bulletins here about things you
can
do. Here’s one called
New Ways to Use Your Root Cellar,
and here’s another—
Simple Improvements for the Farm Home,
which I know will interest your wives.

“Well, let’s go over these forms, now, shall we? I have a little book here with a set of tables in it to make the figuring easier. Just hold up your hand, when you’re ready, and I’ll come and read them off to you.”

“This isn’t Russia you’re in, mister,” said George. “We can all read and do simple arithmetic here. And I’ll tell you what little book of tables
I’d
like to see. As long as you’re going to use our money to print up so many of these little books to tell us what clodhoppers we are and how we ought to go about building bathrooms—I’d like a little book to tell me how to go bankrupt and come out of it with more than I was worth to begin with, the way these bankers and big businessmen and big farmers do. All I know is what I see. I see a little guy lose his shirt and him and his family wind up on relief with every businessman in the county still trying to get something out of his hide. I see a big man go broke and I see him start up again somewheres else, making just as much as he made before. I see a Jew banker go broke right here in this town and go off scot-free with our money and make himself nice and comfortable. Now why don’t you print up a book to tell us clodhoppers how to do that?”

Finnegan couldn’t disregard him. There were too many approving headshakes and loud agreements.

“Well, now then, sir,” he said. “I’d like to know how that’s done, myself, if it is. [
Oh, it most certainly is! We all know them. We all know Harry Goodman.
] And if a little book on that subject comes out, I’ll be sure to let you know. But all I have at the moment are some booklets about agriculture which I’ll be more than pleased to let you have. I’m not an expert in accounting. I came here tonight to tell you about the AAA program to get farmers back on their feet, and I’ll be glad to answer questions on that subject.”

But nobody had any more unanswerable questions for the county agent not to answer. That was the end of the meeting. “Much obliged to you folks for coming on out tonight,” Finnegan cried, “and I do hope you’ll get your neighbors to come to the next one.” He raised his voice another notch. “And talk about this between yourselves, and watch the
Sun
for the next meeting-time up here in Eureka, won’t you?”