A major discussion piece from Harold Ware on the industrialization of U.S. agriculture and the potential tasks of the Party as a result.

‘The Factory Farm’ by Harrow (Harold Ware) from The Communist. Vol. 7 & 8 Nos. 12 & 3. December, 1928 & February, 1929.

A Discussion Article on the Party and the Farm Problem

Rapid changes are taking place among the agricultural masses throughout the United States. The Party must have a more adequate agrarian program. The changes among the rural masses today are accelerated and made more acute because industrial evolution with all its capitalistic ramifications is at last confronted with the necessity to participate in production on the farm.

The traditional small family farm-land unit is giving way. American agriculture must soon be organized and capitalized as other industries have been developed; in short, the factory farm must very rapidly replace the family farm as the typical unit of American agriculture.

As an economist has said, “American industry has not yet learned to do without raw products and food.” We can at least agree to that, and figure by what possible channels will the dominant industrial interests of the nation secure their raw products and food.

Thus:

1. Industry may continue to get them from the family farm. (If you believe this you must show how this form of family farming production can persist.)

2. Industry may get its food and raw products by allowing American agriculture to pass out with ever decreasing production, increasing imports until the United States becomes entirely dependent upon foreign farming.

3. Industry may gradually absorb and re-allocate the land, organizing agriculture as a secondary part of its manufacturing plant. In other words, go in for factory farming.

Whether we think the future of farming means family, foreign, or factory farming, we must study and be able to anticipate the development. The tactics of party workers among the 27 million population on family farms would obviously differ according to the source from which American industry will aim to secure its food and raw products.

Whichever direction American farming takes, whether it dies or develops along industrial lines, it holds a serious menace to American capitalism. To ignore conditions on the farms, allowing them to get worse, means increasing migrations to swell the groing ranks of the unemployed. It means worse than loss of the petit-bourgeois elements for they will increase in militancy in the agrarian states against the industrial groups. To industrialize agriculture gradually will cause isolated local upheavals wherever land is actually taken by foreclosures. While less general in its effects, it also means the eventual loss of the petit-bourgeois class, so important as a buffer.

Magnus W. Alexander, President of the National Industrial Conference Board, speaking of Economic Maladjustments in his annual report, says: “…There is also the important social question involved in the fact that the farm, the heretofore great breeding place of independent, resourceful and healthy citizenship, is losing ground to the cities, and that the farmer is rapidly being turned into a factory, mill or store worker…”

It is my conviction that the farm question constitutes one of American imperialism’s weak spots; that it is inescapably bound up with the entire financial and industrial structure, and that the ever accelerating plunge of the small farm toward bankruptcy creates signal opportunities and demands of leadership upon the Party. The prevalent attitude of party members, however, is one of facetious ignorance. We either describe agrarian work as “fighting capitalism with potatoes,” or pat the white elephant on the head with some borrowed phrases from the first C.I. thesis, or as was done at the last convention, pass by this whole question with twelve or thirteen words.

Lenin found time in the press of his immediate work to write a pamphlet analyzing the Development of Capitalism in American Agriculture. From that point on the Party should study the question and formulate a basic program. Until that is done it will be impossible to recruit party members for work in this field or create any effective contacts with farmers or farm organizations.

I am, unfortunately, not qualified to analyze recent developments as a Marxian student. The only virtue, if any, that my observations may have resides in the fact that I have studied the problem from the technical side and know that industrial agriculture is not only possible, but is already being proved both practicable and profitable in the United States.

THE BASIC FACTS

The following are the propositions which I believe can be proved and should form the basis for our agrarian program:

1. The family farm has already reached the point of bankruptcy as the unit of production in American agriculture and will rapidly give place to industrial agriculture.  

2. American capitalism is preparing to reorganize agriculture along industrial factory farm lines, and will adopt a policy of domestic production of staple foods and raw products required by its commerce and industry.

3. Reorganization of agriculture will proceed along different lines and at different rates in the five general agricultural regions of the United States as indicated in the following map:

I will now sketch briefly the facts supporting these points.

FAMILY FARM BANKRUPTCY

The family farm is bankrupt because it has become an inefficient production unit. Farm costs have been continuously above the world or social prices of food stuffs. The family farm has continued to survive because it did not have to count the costs so long as it had subsidies to make up these losses. Free land was its first subsidy. In the early history of the United States land was merely a means to labor. The farm was a way of living. The farm family was unpaid but self-supporting, making its own food, clothing and shelter. But the evolution of American industry took away the loom, the last, and all other crafts. The farmer then produced food and other products for sale. The farm became a business. By 1910 the last of the free land was gone. Land values rose rapidly. These new watered speculative values of land became another subsidy for the farmer. Land became “capital.” The farmer continued to sell at a production loss, but by selling off some of his land and at last by mortgaging the rest, he continued in business. Later he began to struggle to get more for what he was selling to industry, and from 1915 to 1925 doubled his cooperative market associations. But the latter was a futile gesture, for in the same period his mortgage debt also doubled, Why? Because during this period the index of his costs mounted to 168 and his prices failed to keep up, increasing only to 143.¹

As land became capital it began to pass into the hands of the financial interests and to function more and more as an item in the costs of production.² Jardine, Secretary of Agriculture, recently estimated the mortgage debt for 1926 at $9,500,000,000. (Report on Condition of Agriculture in the United States, Business Men’s Commission on Agriculture.);

The $8,000,000,000 mortgages in 1921, according to the Farm Mortgage Bankers Association were distributed as follows:

Federal Land Banks—5%; Insurance Companies—15%; Joint Stock Land Banks—1%; Farm Loan Companies—40%; Local Investors—23%; State and National Banks—16%.

In addition to mortgage, short-term loans to farmers must be considered. There are 30,178 banks. Of these 13,540 reported.³ 10,261 of this number reported farm loans to the extent of $1,586,500,000. On the basis of these figures it is estimated that the total for all banks is $3,870,000,000, (or 13.29% of the short term loans and discounts of the banks).

Merchants’ loans to farmers are also significant. “Rates of interest in ‘liens’ on the cotton crop of southern tenants probably average 40% annually.”⁴

If we use the census definition of “farmer,” all this means that absentee land ownership has become a dominant factor. Taking tenants, managers, and part owners we have 3,058,150 farmers, or 47.9% of the total, operating land which does not belong to them. But if we include mortgaged owners who have relinquished 40% of their equity at present “values,” and nearly 80% of the production values of the land, we find that 67.4% of the farmers of the United States no longer own their basic means of production.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN FIVE YEARS?

An increase in mortgage debt and number of farms mortgaged; a decrease in the better-off cash tenants; an increase in poor tenants; a decrease in managed farms, but not in the proportion of improved land operated by managers.

Taking the farmers total debts—mortgage, personal and trade, we have the startling estimate of 15 billion, which at 67 means an annual tribute of nine hundred million dollars to capitalism. We also find a decided decrease in the value of farm land and buildings. Thus the average value per acre in 1920 was $69.38, and in 1925, $53.52, and the total value was $66,316,002,602 in 1920 and $49,467,647,287 in 1925. Along with this decrease in farm values goes the decrease in value of crops and annual products not counting crops fed to animals, which in 1920 amounted to $14,811,000,000 and in 1925 to $13,034,000,000. Remember, too, that the purchasing power of the farm dollar in 1925 was only 60% of the 1909-14 average, and that even the shrinking 1925 values represent much “watered” value and do not reflect the actual producing value of the land. The 1910 values would be much more nearly correct, i.e., $34,801,125,697.

The Attorney General’s office reports a steady increase in the number of cases of bankruptcies:

In 1920 there were 21.1 farm bankruptcies to each 100,000 farms, and in 1924 there were 123.2. While farm bankruptcies increased, commercial failures decreased. An analysis of the locality of these cases shows that New York, California, Ohio, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia, Minnesota, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts lead, with New York at the top of the list.

The average cost of farm labor from 1920-25 has slightly decreased, but payments for labor have steadily risen since 1850. The self-sufficient isolation of the days when the farm was the only means of income for the whole family is past history. Now the farm youth gets paid or leaves. The unorganized farm must compete with organized industry. The Crops and Markets Supplement, U.S. Department of Agriculture, July, 1925, shows that the average earned on net capital invested by all farm operators as reward for both management and use of capital was 3.6%, family labor being computed equal to hired labor. This 3.6% can be figured in two ways: as a capitalist the farmer gets half the bank rate; as a worker he gets the same as the unskilled laborer.

The annual turnover of farm population resulting in a net loss to the farm is a significant factor affecting city unemployment. It is also the barometer indicating the rate at which the farmer’s capital is being absorbed by losses in production, As hired labor became higher priced, machinery developed to replace it. But this increase in machinery has begun to add to costs. The law of diminishing returns has begun to apply, for the family farm is too small for the efficient use of machinery. Of the 6,371,640 farm units only 0.07%, or 55,873 are over 1,000 acres, and only 0.01%, or 7,455 are over 5,000 acres. 2,437,227 or 38% are under 50. Tractors are capable of working 2,000 hours per year on large areas, yet the average farmer uses his only 300 to 400 hours. There are 500,000 tractors on farms in the United States. Taking an average value of $600 per tractor, we find that $300,000,000 and 5 million horse power are being used at less than 20% of an efficient maximum.⁵

For a decade the capitalist economists and politicians, farm “doctors” and “leaders” have preached remedies for the small farm unit. We all remember the “Back to the Land” bunk. Then the great urge to produce two blades of grass or two pigs, or two bolls of cotton where only one grew before. Our agricultural colleges set out to show the farmer how to do this. But now you find the Department of Agriculture, economists, and politicians urging the opposite remedy, i.e., “Reduce production to fit the demand at a high price.” To quote a government publication: “Increased efficiency cannot have a favorable effect on the returns that farmers as a group will receive if production is increased so much that the advantage is lost through a decline in prices;” and then the writer goes on to show that big crops mean low prices and greater loss per unit than low crop yields. In other words our technical development has reached a stalemate on our scattered farming system of small land units.

It is generally suggested that we have too many farmers (one-third of the number could do the job); too much water in land values; too much invested in an excess of antiquated types of machinery. There is no organization and coordination of the work of farmers as producers; too much duplicated and wasted horse power per farm; too many sub-marginal acres used. There is absolutely no control of the distributive machinery. Low grade educational and social facilities and constant migration to cities are resulting in general deterioration of type of farm population.

This is the quicksand basis of family farming today. Stripped of its old subsidies it has begun to demand new subsidies from Congress; for example the equalization fee in the McNary-Haugen Bill which would really mean a subsidy to keep them going. Coolidge will have to veto that again, and the majority that sent the bill to him will not repass it. The family farm cannot reduce its costs to the world price level, set first by cheap labor and now by industrial farming with mass production methods. Without organization, due to its isolation, and surrounded by the keenest commercial and financial competition, the over-capitalized, under-sized production unit must take its place with the hand loom, the horse car and the tallow candle, in the museum.

REORGANIZATION OF AGRICULTURE BY AMERICAN CAPITAL

What evidence is there that capital will go into factory farming? I have not had time to go into the question of the dependence of American industry upon American farming as thoroughly as it must be done. Nevertheless, I shall attempt to show that this dependence exists, and that it is logical to foresee that foreign farming could not supply our national demand as efficiently and cheaply as American factory farms.

No data was accessible to show the investments of capital in all manufacturing plants, mills, etc. which are dependent upon raw products and foodstuffs from American farms, but it undoubtedly soars into billions. And one significant factor in relation to their future must be remembered, namely that these investments in manufacturing and storage plants are located along internal routes to receive the raw products as they flow from special farm areas in the United States. If industry were to become dependent on foreign farm products it would have to scrap millions of dollars in investment and build new plants nearer to the seaboard. In the case of meat packing, the largest part of its total investment of $1,200,000,000 is in the middle west because it is cheaper to ship finished meat products than cows. Just so, dairy products can be produced far away, but fresh milk must be produced nearer to the consuming centers, also fresh vegetables. As one reviews the subject, one is impressed with the fact that the raw products of agriculture which lend themselves to a long haul, and so to an import policy if we should adopt it, are the very products we cannot get from foreign farmers at as low costs as domestic industrial agriculture could produce them. Take cotton. We now produce 60% of the world’s cotton crop. We export 70% of what the rest of the world imports. We consume one third of the total used by all importing countries. If we should stop production of cotton, and thus stop our exports, we would need the entire cotton export of all other producing countries. What would happen to world prices if we had to compete with the European, English and Japanese mills? Obviously, cotton represents a type of farming we cannot drop.

Our clothing manufacturers produce annually goods worth $2,370,000,000. They are naturally interested in American cotton and wool farming.

Or to make it more graphic. The last census showed that the total value of manufacturing products was $62,418,078,773. There were listed 16 industries which produced annually goods worth one billion dollars or more. Of the 16, nine were manufacturers of farm (not forest) products, and only seven made use of natural resources. The largest of all was the meat-packing business with more than $4,000,000,000. Iron and steel was a poor second with $2,800,000,000, and autos third with $2,400,000,000.

The total value of goods manufactured from farm products was $19,780,459,917, or 31.5% of the total. These industries employ 20% of the total persons engaged in manufacturing. With these figures in mind one can judge whether there will be an incentive on the part of large business enterprises dependent on raw products from farms to promote factory farming.

The railroads will also be interested. 15% of their business results from the movement of raw farm products. A southern railroad recently made inquiry as to the feasibility of organizing big farm units on its land holdings along its right of way. Finance capital may also be expected to have a stake in factory farming. Already farm debts are being estimated at 15 billions. This includes mortgages, second mortgages, notes, and other forms of paper which always fall into the bankers’ hands. His security is “land and buildings.” This is good security so long as there is a market for it as an investment. Farm failures, however, are restricting and in some cases eliminating markets for farm deeds. The banker can squeeze the water out of land values and still sell at his mortgage value and come out. But the small returns of farmers have been too well advertised. There aren’t enough “suckers” to solve the bankers’ entire 15 billion dollar problem that way. They have given up publication of the “Banker Farmer” magazine published to encourage the individual. Finance capital may be planning a navy bigger than England’s to protect its imports and exports, but no policy is safer than home production of staples, foods and raw products controlled to fit domestic demands, with exports left entirely to the manufacturing interests.

A distinct change since 1920 is to be noted in the complexion of editorials and farm journalism generally. It is no longer sacrilege to discuss “efficient land units,” “power units per man,” etc. Even Jardine, Secretary of Agriculture, said in the Magazine of Wall Street for February 25, 1928:

“The lasting cure can be found only in bringing big business to the farmer or the farmer to big business. It can only be found in a rational control by the farmer of the factors that determine price.”

Still other developments are noteworthy. ‘There is now a Society for Agricultural Engineers, and the University of Pennsylvania has installed its first Professor of Industrial Agriculture in its Wharton School and the University of Columbia has formed an Agricultural Research Bureau. Even the Department of Agriculture has begun its first study of big farming. Heretofore it just wasn’t done. We had a “tradition” and the politicians who headed the Department had to uphold it. Now they are beginning timidly to study the farms of 1,000 acres or more “as a beginning to further studies.”

The point to be made is that behind agricultural journalism, the Department of Agriculture, and all other elements who have given voice to the idea of reorganization, stands BIG CAPITAL.

Finance capital is studying the question of its interests. Bankers, Farm Loan and Insurance Companies, all of whom hold large blocks of mortgages, got together some time ago for the purpose of studying the question. Recently the Industrial Conference Board of New York made an exhaustive study of agriculture. One of their suggestions regarding production control, i.e., their veiled order to the “independent” farmer, was as follows:

“Ultimately, in working out our national agricultural policy, we shall need, I believe, a constructive and strongly applied land policy, involving not only a thorough classification of our land resources, but also some measure of control in their utilization…Local business organizations, railroads and bankers can exercise, if they will, a real force in this matter, and the industries, by intelligently selecting their locations and promoting the geographical diffusion of manufacturing operations, can also help materially. There may at times be an important conflict of self-interest, but in the long run none of these groups can gain through a policy of stimulating unwise and uneconomic land settlement.”

The exhaustive study of the Industrial Conference Board was followed by the formation of a “Business Men’s Commission on Agriculture,” organized jointly by the Board and the United States Chamber of Commerce. Neither, however, are responsible for the commission, which is to function “independently.” A glance at its membership will serve to emphasize the diverse capitalist interests concerned in the future of farming:

Hon. Charles Nagel, of Nagel and Kirby, St. Louis, Mo., Chairman
Robert W. Bingham, publisher of the Louisville Courier-Journal.
E. N. Brown, chairman of the St. Louis-San Francisco Ry. Co., New York.
E. M. Herr, president of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Co. New York.
J. G. Lonsdale president of the National Bank of Commerce, St Louis Mo.
William Cooper Proctor, president The Proctor and Gamble Co., Cincinnati, O.
A. R. Rogers, president of Rogers Lumber Co., Minneapolis, Minn.
John Stuart, president of the Quaker Oats Co., Chicago, Ill.
Alfred H. Swayne, vice-president General Motors Corporation, New York.
Paul M. Warburg, chairman of the International Acceptance Corporation, New York.

MACHINERY AS A FACTOR IN CAPITALIST REORGANIZATION

Parallel to the decline of the small farmer, we find a sudden development of machinery which will hasten mass production on the farms. Again you must make a significant note. Such developments are the result of experimentation and the expenditure of much capital. Until there is a demand, and until capital is interested, such machines remain ideas. Today the experimental departments of all the large agricultural machinery companies are working on big power machinery.

Types of farming which formerly required much hand labor have already been invaded by new machines. Cotton, for instance, was never produced in the past without the famous “N***r and a mule.” But today cotton is outgrowing its traditional background. The boll weevil jarred the southern capitalist and forced his active interest in production. It was impossible for the poverty stricken, illiterate Negro and poor white to employ the methods essential for fighting the boll weevil. The inevitable development was more and more refinement in the management and land owners. The old tenant cropper was at first jacked up and told to do thus and so or “no credit.” Then reorganization began. Plantation systems took on new significance. A plantation is described by the Census Bureau as a large area of land broken up into plots allotted to tenants, or it may actually be operated by hired hands. These plantations cover large areas, the typical ones running about 1,000 acres. Over 22,000 such plantations producing rice, cotton and tobacco have been studied. “These have a total area of more than 19 million acres.

When the low cotton prices of 1926 came, a method had to be found even cheaper than cheap Negro and Mexican “hands.” Thus what is known as “sledding” came into the harvest of cotton in Texas. This was a rough and tumble method, the product was dirty and it involved some waste, but was the only profitable method with cotton at 9 cents per pound. ‘This experience stimulated the development of the mechanical cotton picker which has been perfected. Then came the general purpose tractor which can cultivate as well as plow. The result will be larger land units in cotton production, capitalist management, exit the “N***r and mule”—the latter to the boneyard, the former to northern or southern urban centers to increase unemployment. All through the southern agricultural problem runs the complicating factor of race prejudice. It divides poor white farmers from the Negroes. There is no more exploited class anywhere than the southern Negro farmer.

Here is a quotation from the Journal of Agricultural Engineers entitled “More Power per Man”:

“When a year’s labor of a man and his family is spent in producing 15 acres of cotton at prevailing costs and prices, he does not acquire enough in a year to purchase any of the luxuries of life. If he is able to buy the plainest food and essential clothing and does not go further into debt, he is fortunate…Under improved methods of cultivation he may produce a bale of cotton per acre. With power and machinery he may handle even 100 acres of cotton per man except for harvest.”

Perfectly true. The engineers know their stuff, and are planning to increase from 15 to 100 acres per man, but when this is done it means ruthless evictions of poor whites and Negroes and a complete reorganization of southern agriculture.

In the case of eastern dairying, another machine invented, perfected, and now being manufactured is the alfalfa drying machine. It brings the production of alfalfa meal, an important base in concentrates fed to dairy cattle (20% protein) to the humid east. It eliminates the overland haul from Colorado and California. (Transportation must always be added to price if we plan to import stuff). But this machine costs $30,000. Obviously our typical dairy man in New York with his hundred acres can’t use it. Mason, the millionaire U. S. Steel engineer who invented and developed the alfalfa drying machine says: “The day of the small farmer was passed five years ago.”

Walker Gordon, on a big industrial dairy farm, near Trenton, N.J., has already installed this machine. It handles 500 acres of alfalfa with seven men, manufacturing air-dry alfalfa meal from field to bag in 45 minutes. One need not dwell on the future probability that other large distributors of milk in cities will extend their holdings and interest beyond merely putting the milk bottles on your door step, to the production of the milk itself, just as soon

land values fall, and supplies decrease by farmers quitting. The machinery is already perfected that will make the industrial production of milk in the east possible.

Still another interesting development has been that of the combine, the machine which cuts and threshes standing grain in one operation. This machine has reduced the labor required in harvest o such an extent that the state of Kansas no longer requires the stream of migratory unemployed workers to flow through its farm lands at harvest time. In fact, employment agencies in Kansas in 1927 advertised to keep workers out—exactly the reverse of two years ago. This sudden change in so short a time affecting migratory workers, is indicative of the rate that we may expect in other directions in the reorganization of agriculture. Only those farmers who can afford to buy a combine and who own sufficient acreage to keep it busy will survive in the grain producing business—but even their improved position is not for long. Already the factory farm of Campbell in Montana has still further reduced costs per hour by inventing machinery that widens the use of the combine, and requires larger and larger acreage, and new types of supplementary machines.

THE CAMPBELL FACTORY FARM

I must note in passing what I consider a most significant capitalist experimental station for the reorganization of industrial agriculture—the Campbell farm located in central Montana. The development of machinery there has constantly eliminated many hours and increased acres per man. Campbell’s costs per bushel are considerably below the selling price. The United States Department of Agriculture shows that the average Montana farmer produces at a business loss, yet Campbell has averaged for nine years net profits of 15% on his investment as a wheat farmer. Campbell himself speaks frankly. He says:

“Most of all, however, farming must be industrialized. The biggest industrial opportunity today is in agriculture. The largest field for technical men today is in agricultural engineering. In less than fifty years we will have a United States Farming Corporation larger than U. S. Steel.”

Just as soon as population overtakes wheat production and the surplus of wheat over domestic consumption disappears, more “Campbell Farms” will be organized. Another farm in operation in North Dakota resembles the plantation system of the south. The farm in question covers 40,000 acres. It is operated partly by the corporation and partly by tenants. It is a large centrally managed estate. The size of the tenant plot varies, but may run up to hundreds of acres. Each tenant has a contract. The farm plan is made by the owner. Taxes and houses are supplied, the tenant supplying his own power and equipment and getting half the crop. This form of management may become an intermediary step to be taken by capital en route to industrial farming in the grain belt. The “Adams and Grandin Wheatlands” in North Dakota closely resembles the Campbell farm in its methods. A long list of new and improved machines effecting changes in the production of potatoes, sugar, rice, hay and many other products, could be cited. These machines will probably never increase yields per acre. But capital is interested in costs per bushel, and in more bushels per investment. This is expressed by the engineers in the phrase: “More power per man applied to more acres per man.” As long as half our population was willing to produce farm products at a loss it was unnecessary for capital to take any more risks than were demanded to keep the “Follies of Farming” going. But the show is stale, and I predict that a new cast will begin rehearsals in 1930, with the engineers as stage managers.

SUMMARY

I have tried to show that family farming can no longer drift along; that two thirds of the farms are already owned or controlled by absentee capital. That along with overhead debt of annual interest of $900,000,000, goes the independence of 67% of the farmers, and this drain increases mortgages, tenancy and farm bankruptcy. We have seen the futile effort of farmers to secure more for their products through cooperative marketing associations. The tide of capitalist absorption has reached the point of 15 billions in debts of farmers who own and operate the land. I have tried to show that the average farm unit is too small to be efficient in the profitable utilization of modern motor equipment. Parallel to this it has been evident that the great advances in farm machinery have increased the organization of farms by capitalist interests. We have seen that 31% of manufactured products originate from farm products, which indicates the reason for a striking change in the editorial policy of agricultural periodicals and among editors and officials generally. This change has been followed by definite research by bankers and industrial interests who are concerned in the future of agriculture. Research bureaus, industrial, agricultural and engineering courses have recently been established in some of our foremost universities.

It becomes clear that these factors are operating with unequal effect in various sections of the country. The five agricultural sections of the U.S. arbitrarily follow state lines, so that a statistical yardstick may be applied. But each one represents a distinct type of farming conditions which has evolved from the background of geography and climate of the section. Obviously, then, we may expect different political developments among the farmers in each section.

The thinly settled mountain and coast sections are least important from the farm population point of view. There is a well controlled industrial capitalist agriculture in these sections. Over two thirds of the farm population are to be found in the eastern half of the United States close to the industrial centers. Only eleven of the 40 states can still be called “agrarian” i.e., with fifty per cent of the population living on farms. Three of these are in the grain belt—Section 3—Oklahoma, North and South Dakota. All the remaining eight are in the south.

In the south the farms are below average size, and the agrarian problem is complicated by the universal race prejudice. The majority of the Negro race in the United States live in rural districts. In this section the dominant crop—cotton—is of the utmost importance to commercial, manufacturing and financial interests. This crop is on the brink of a revolution in production. Swift changes must be expected in this section.

THE ROLE OF THE PARTY—WHAT SHALL IT BE?

We can get nowhere by thinking in European terms, or even in general terms, for the United States as a whole. “Rich,” “middle,” “poor” and “tenant farmers,” become so much Greek unless used and defined in connection with a particular section and type of agriculture. Capitalism in American agriculture is an accomplished fact. Yet it is only now emerging from its indirect absorption to a definite control. There is as yet no general and direct conflict, either for land or wages between working farmers and those who own and control the land. Yet we must soon prepare to lead that conflict. What has the Party to offer in agrarian tactics and program for each of the agricultural sections?

How shall we recruit active party members in this field? What type of party machinery must be provided to coordinate the activities of necessarily scattered agrarian organizers and membership? What publications shall we plan to use in gaining contacts and later actual influence among farmers, and so bid for leadership in their struggle? How shall we solve the riddle of bidding for leadership of an historically doomed equity in the ownership of land which will make them militant enemies of the capitalist class? Is it true that they have already shown a tendency to make demands and approach the radical—inasmuch as capitalist politicians dare to accede to those demands? Shall it be the future policy of the Party to do nothing because it anticipates a very slow development of farm bankruptcy? What shall be the attitude of agrarian workers among the migratory workers seeking employment from the working farmer? What kind of work shall there be and by whom shall it be done in the south in view of the race prejudice which exists between the exploited white and Negro farmers? If it is true that economic conditions actually threaten the farmers’ possession of land, and so increase his general militancy, what shall we do to direct these militant farmers to make demands upon capitalism? Can this influence be gained by a frankly radical paper? If so, how can it obtain circulation? Where should this paper be published? In an isolated town with no research facilities, or in a center such as Washington, D.C., where national farm organizations have headquarters and where research possibilities are at hand?

Would an extra-Party Agricultural Research Bureau attempting to issue its findings in a regular bulletin designed to make a wide appeal to editors of progressive magazines, newspapers, and memberships of farm organizations be more effective than an isolated farm paper with a small localized circulation?

Isn’t it the basic principle of agricultural propaganda that it should coincide with the farmers’ demands upon capitalism and carry these further? If this is true, agrarian publications will require not only farm investigators but skilled writers and well grounded Marxists who understand the limits of their medium because they understand farmer psychology.

We must at last realize that the American problem is unique, and utilize not only Americans in going after John Farmer, but strictly “American” methods in accomplishing results. Remember that the tin Lizzie made the Non-Partisan League possible— for success depended on immediate widespread capitalization of the situation.

We must have a network of Party members in each of the five sections keeping in touch with developments, and we must devise ways of putting material that applies to immediate problems in their hands. Obviously farm organizations are the logical mediums. It will be found to be a unique organizational problem for the Party to make its agrarian membership function effectively.

Fundamentally farmers are fighting for their land. Everyone is admitting we must make one farm where ten or twenty were before. We can’t dodge this desirable evolution of farming. But can’t we demand that industrial farms be organized by the working farmers themselves, i.e., tenants and mortgaged farmers? That the water of land values be squeezed out of mortgages and not out of the farmers’ equity, and so fight to prevent foreclosures?

Can’t we demand that large special credits be granted to farmers who will form big, efficient land units, demand that these credits be secured not by land mortgages but by returns from future crops i.e., on labor; demand moratoriums on old debts for a period of years to allow successful reorganization?

These are just a few of the questions that occur to one actually interested in working in this field. I realize the immediate reasons for lack of a definite agrarian program, and with much hesitancy I have made a few tentative suggestions:

That agrarian work must be greatly intensified. That it must engage the serious study of the Party leadership. That special workers should begin sectional studies of American farming. That some members of the C.E.C. be made actively responsible for agrarian organization and coordination of the work of agrarian members.

A questionnaire might be sent to all sections of the Party aimed to determine who is interested and qualified to take up agrarian Party work. It must not be considered a side-line for busy members. I am convinced that revolutionary changes in agricultural production are imminent and beckon—even challenge—the Party to action.

NOTES.

1. Index numbers given by Industrial Conference Board.

3. Bulletin 1048, December 31st, 1920, Farm Mortgage Bankers Association.

4. George K. Holmes in U. S. Industrial Commission Report.

There are a number of journals with this name in the history of the movement. This ‘Communist’ was the main theoretical journal of the Communist Party from 1927 until 1944. Its origins lie with the folding of The Liberator, Soviet Russia Pictorial, and Labor Herald together into Workers Monthly as the new unified Communist Party’s official cultural and discussion magazine in November, 1924. Workers Monthly became The Communist in March ,1927 and was also published monthly. The Communist contains the most thorough archive of the Communist Party’s positions and thinking during its run. The New Masses became the main cultural vehicle for the CP and the Communist, though it began with with more vibrancy and discussion, became increasingly an organ of Comintern and CP program. Over its run the tagline went from “A Theoretical Magazine for the Discussion of Revolutionary Problems” to “A Magazine of the Theory and Practice of Marxism-Leninism” to “A Marxist Magazine Devoted to Advancement of Democratic Thought and Action.” The aesthetic of the journal also changed dramatically over its years. Editors included Earl Browder, Alex Bittelman, Max Bedacht, and Bertram D. Wolfe.

PDF of issue 1: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/communist/v08n03-mar-1929-communist.pdf

PDF of issue 2: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/communist/v08n03-mar-1929-communist.pdf