EDITORIAL GRIST

MARKETING AND FARM CREDITS

HERMAN N. MORSE

Though little that was new on the subjects under discussion was brought forward, the First National Conference on Marketing and Farm Credits, through the papers presented and the official resolutions adopted, called attention to certain highly important facts. The conference agreed that a number of conditions detrimental both to the farmers and the general public are prevalent, and that certain constructive remedial policies are necessary. One proposition to which there was general agreement was that the margin between the price which the producer receives for his product and that which the consumer pays for it is too great. The farmer receives too little and the consumer pays too much. The market for farm products is too unstable and the fluctuations and variations in price are too great and too uncertain. Competition has failed adequately to control and regulate prices.

The present marketing facilities, it was stated, are utterly inadequate to bring the supply and the demand together. Quantities of farm produce rot in the fields because they cannot be gotten to those markets in which there is an active demand for them. This is partly because of the lack of properly distributed shipping facilities; partly because the producers are not sufficiently in touch with the markets; partly because storage firms, commission men’s associations, etc. interfere with the normal operation of the markets; and partly because certain kinds of products are not provided to the mass of consumers at prices which they can afford to pay, though that price would give the producer an ample profit if exorbitant middleman’s profits were eliminated.

B. F. Yoakum estimated that every year fruit and vegetables worth $35,000,000 rot on the ground from the lack of shipping and storage facilities and of knowledge of receptive markets. The annual loss from corn stalks, rice, flax and other grain straw which is now burned he estimated at $250,000,000. The additional amount which the farmers could receive for their products, if by co-operation they knew when and where to sell their products, he placed at $1,500,000,000 per year, making a total loss of $1,785,000,000. In the judgment of the conference this was not an over-statement of the facts.

The delegates to the conference also agreed that the average farmer has a total income disproportionate to his importance in the national economy. W. J. Spillman, chief of the Bureau of Farm Management of the federal Department of Agriculture, estimated that the average farm income in this country is about $655 a year; of this amount about $1 a day is the entire return for labor. This labor income, he asserted, holds throughout the states. After computing the interest on his investment, the farmer averages $1 for every day he works. In states such as Illinois, he said, where the investment is greater, the farm family has a larger sum to use without impairing the capital than in a state like New York. The difference, however, is in the interest on invested capital not in labor income.

Even in sections where the farmers generally are satisfied with the return which they get for their labor, they are unable to get products to the consumers at a reasonable price. This works a great and unnecessary hardship upon the poor.

Farmers generally, and especially small farmers, it was agreed, are at present unable to secure for sufficient time and at a reasonable rate, the capital with which to purchase land or proper equipment and materials for the most effective and economical operation of farm property. In this connection the European methods of rural credit were discussed at some length.

In considering the remedies for these conditions, certain general principles, it was decided, should control whatever policies were advocated.

It was urged that farm products ought to be generally standardized as commercial products are. There should also be organization among farmers for the raising of particular standardized products in different communities or in different parts of the same community to which they are especially adapted. Scientific farming and soil conservation were assumed.

The key-word emphasized by the speakers for all efforts to improve agricultural conditions was co-operation. This co-operation, they declared, must have the dual purpose of giving the producer a fair and consistent profit and of giving products to the consumer at the lowest possible price. The producer and the consumer must be taken into complete partnership. Combination must never be on the principle of the industrial combinations or trusts. This will require some little revision of our present anti-trust laws to permit combinations except “in so far as they are detrimental to the interests of the people.”

Finally, the conference in its formal resolutions advocated the following constructive measures:

(a) The passage by Congress of a currency system which will permit farmers to obtain currency on their land in much the same manner that national bankers obtain currency by depositing bonds as security.

(b) Taking government crop reporting out of the hands of “stock gamblers” and making it a public matter.

(d) The organized co-operation, both of consumers and producers, under proper supervision, to promote effective distribution, economical marketing, and to reduce expenses between producer and consumer.

(e) Organized co-operation properly supervised to secure more advantageous systems of rural credit.

(f) The extension and improvement of the parcel’s post as a potent factor in reducing the cost and facilitating the distribution of the products of the farm to the ultimate consumers.

WARREN DUNHAM FOSTER

You can’t be wise on an empty stomach. You can’t fill that stomach until you are wise. Nor can you be educated or fed until you are good, happy, clean—nor good, happy or clean until you are educated and fed. In the individual, then, life is a complete circle, every part of which is integral. In the whole group of individuals, there is the same circle, no part of which is complete in itself, or even significant unless considered merely as a segment.

This fundamental fact, so obvious, yet so seldom fully recognized, gave form and force to the Conference on Education in the South, recently held in Richmond. Farmers, business men, country preachers, officials, writers, editors, physicians, plain citizens, and school teachers—some 2,300—met together to discuss the problems which are common to them all. Wonder of wonders, the “conference” was a real conference; spell binding addresses were conspicuous by their absence. To a remarkable extent, the programconsisted of concise and vigorous statements of actual accomplishments and constructive pleas for needed accomplishments. At one meeting Virginia Pearl Moore of Tennessee would tell how a mountain girl had made at the cost of a dollar or so a home canner with which she had won a prize—and rebuilt a whole community; at another E. M. Tousley of Minnesota would tell how the farmers’ corporation at Dassel in his state had procured for the consumer his share of the price of his crops—and rounded out and made full the life of the neighborhood.

These men and women who met at Richmond had their faces set toward the village and the open country. They realized that American life was becoming a pyramid set wrong end up. To turn the pyramid over, so that at the bottom supporting the whole structure will be a satisfied and satisfying country life, was the large task to which these southerners gave vigorous attention. The conference took note of the fact that the “great American contortion” of the fed trying to support the feeder cannot be perpetuated. It realized, too, that the general assumption that all country people are or are to become men is wholly wrong; that it is many generations past the time when in an organized and comprehensive way, educational and social agencies should have begun to help the farmer’s wife and daughter so that they could help themselves. To be sure, wife and daughter will not have their due until the farmer is economically efficient, but what are the chances that he will increase his yield if he has to eat poorly cooked food, to say nothing of putting up with a nagging wife and a discontented daughter?

As the most tangible and immediate method of making the farmer more efficient economically, the conference emphasized better business methods. Here again Dr. Albert P. Bourland, executive secretary, showed discernment, in that he related the subject of agricultural co-operation and better farm credits to the other topics discussed—school, church, home and business in the large. The conference had the right to preach co-operation for it was practicing it!

All the discussions were illuminated by honesty—the recognition of problems and the characterization of evils by their right names. Indeed, this meeting made the few visitors from north of Mason and Dixon’s line again wish that in their sections of the country there were the same hearty frankness joined to tact.

Since this conference discussed the whole of the circle of life, what right had it to be called a conference foreducation?

In the South, the machinery for social amelioration is to a large extent educational. Whether it be the hook worm in South Carolina or bad housing in Texas that is attacked, efforts to make the South a better place in which to live emanate to a surprising degree from state departments of education, agricultural colleges, state universities, sectarian colleges, secondary schools, and—praise be!—one-room rural schools. Whether or not these institutions have the help of individuals, they do their work in the name of all of the people.

MORRIS KNOWLESPittsburgh Flood Commission

MORRIS KNOWLES

Pittsburgh Flood Commission

Early reports of the recent Ohio floods gave many the impression that the disasters were due to the failure of reservoirs; and as these reports were not generally corrected later, this impression no doubt remains in the minds of some. An investigation made during the week following the disasters showed this to be incorrect; but the escape was so narrow in some instances that the lesson of reservoirs of this sort is driven home almost as strongly as if they had failed and caused an enormous destruction of life and property.

Most of the reservoirs in the flooded districts belonged to the Ohio state canal system and were constructed to supply water for the canals in the dry seasons. In addition, the Columbus water supply storage dam on the Scioto river, was reported to have failed, causing a panic in Columbus. A number of power dams in various parts of the state were also the subjects of similar rumors. But these reports were either entirely without foundation, as in the case of the Columbus dam, or else the dams were relatively unimportant, so that this article may well be confined to the canal reservoirs.

The Ohio canal system, built in the second quarter of the last century, consists of two main divisions—the Ohio Canal, or eastern route, connecting Lake Erie and the Ohio river by way of the Cuyahoga, Tuscarawas, Muskingum, Licking and Scioto river valleys; and the Miami and Erie Canal, or western route, connecting Lake Erie and the Ohio river by way of the Maumee, Auglaize, and Miami river valleys. In addition, the Muskingum river was slack-watered below Zanesville. Numerous lateral, feeder and tributary canals completed a system which had cost approximately $16,000,000 and which comprised in 1850 over 1,000 miles of canals, more than 300 lift locks and half a dozen reservoirs.

In the case of each of the main canal routes, water was lacking on the summit level during the dry season, and the reservoirs were constructed to supplement the normal flow at such times. The Portage Lakes, just south of Akron, were dammed about 1840, to supply the summit of the eastern route; Loramie and Lewistown Reservoirs about 1850–60, for the western route; and the Licking Reservoir, or Buckeye Lake, about 1832, for the Licking summit. In addition, Grand Reservoir, the largest in the state, wasbuilt about 1841, to supply the northern slope of the Miami and Erie Canal.

LOOKING DOWN THE EAST RESERVOIR CREVASSEIn the wreckage are the remains of a saloon and of a concrete bridge.

During the middle of the last century, just prior to the Civil War, these canals were very active, and brought in a gross revenue, during some years, of over $500,000. In 1851 the gross earnings were over $799,000, and the net earnings almost $470,000. But later, the decline came, as it did on all of the old canals. As the canal section and lock dimensions were out-grown by the demands of modern traffic, a gradual abandonment of navigation followed, until now, for many years, there has been no canal freight traffic at all. Some of the branch and feeder canals have been officially abandoned, and either left to deteriorate without attention, or else filled up. Several of the reservoirs were dedicated by the legislature, by several acts passed since 1894, to use as public parks and pleasure resorts, with the provision, however, that they must be maintained for canal purposes.

For the past few years, therefore, the only revenues from the canals have been from the leasing of lands for oil well drilling and from the sale of water or water power to private or municipal water works and industrial plants. An annual appropriation has been made, in addition, to assist in meeting the expense of maintenance. There has, therefore, been no great stimulus to comprehensive and thorough work, and probably a great deal of the maintenance has been of a perfunctory character. The canals and reservoirs are in charge of a Board of Public Works of three members, but neither this nor any other state body or official appears to have had the specific duty of investigating these reservoirs from the sole point of view of public safety.

The Portage Lakes, about six miles south of Akron, were provided with no spillway whatever. The only way water could be discharged from them was through a thirty-six inch pipe. At the beginning of the rain-storm, the level in the reservoirs was within about one foot of the top of the embankment. It was not surprising, therefore, that the lakes filled up, overflowed the low embankment and washed out a crevasse about twenty-five feet deep and nearly 200 feet wide. The water overflowed a considerable area of low farm lands.

At the Lewistown Reservoir, which covers 6,000 acres, about a quarter of a mile of the west embankment was overflowed continuously for a day and a half. Waves dashed over the top of the south bank for several days. Both banks were almost despaired of, and a large force of men, including cottagers and citizens from neighboring towns, worked hard, placing logs and sand bags, to save them. In this they were successful, but a large area south of the reservoir was overflowed.

The Loramie Reservoir of 1,830 acres was already filled to above the spillway level when the rain started, and the water reached a maximum elevation of about four feet above the 200 foot spillway. Two small crevasses about twenty and twenty-five feet wide respectively and five or six feet deep, were washed out at a low portion of the embankment.

The Grand Reservoir is one of the largest artificial bodies of water in the world and covers about 13,400 acres. The water rose to about two feet above the ninety-five foot spillway. The water did not come near overtopping the banks, but heavy waves were driven against and over them, eroding them seriously at some points, and softening and furrowing their backs at others.A large force of volunteers worked with the laborers, filling and placing bags of sand, while a company of state militia patrolled the banks. No breaks occurred at any point, but the situation was critical for two or three days.

REPAIRED BREAK IN LORAMIE RESERVOIR EMBANKMENT.When the break occurred the water was about four feet over the spillway.

These situations teach a lesson that ought never to need repetition. Reservoir failures did not contribute measurably to the flood damage in Ohio. The trouble was caused by excessive and extensive rains.

But even if the reservoirs did not fail with disastrous results, the margin was a narrow one and the lesson is equally plain. It has long been an engineering principle that an earth embankment must not be overtopped. Twenty-four years ago, the Johnstown disaster, due to insufficient spillway capacity, impressed this upon the whole world. And it is an interesting parallel, that this was caused by an old reservoir originally built by the state for canal purposes, and later abandoned and used for pleasure purposes. Yet in Ohio there were four earth embankment reservoirs, one of which had no spillway and a far from sufficient discharge pipe; two of which filled up so that the banks were overflowed; and one which did not overflow, but which filled up sufficiently so that waves were driven over the embankments. Nor was the rainfall one beyond the range of probability. The March storm probably broke all records for combined intensity, duration and extent. But for small drainage areas such as these (52 to 114 square miles) the rainfall was not unprecedented. At least two storms have occurred in Ohio during the past forty years in which the rainfall in forty-eight hours was greater than that recorded in any forty-eight hours of the late storm, at any station, excepting Piqua, which is below the reservoirs in question. And in at least one storm in the same period, the rainfall for twenty-four hours was within .06 inch of the highest twenty-four hour rainfall of last month.

The faults in these reservoirs, then, were not due to a lack of knowledge as to what to expect, but only to failure to apply knowledge already gained. In this case, of course, state ownership put an extra responsibility on Ohio to see that its property was not a menace to its citizens. But, in any case, the state is the only institution which can see that such structures are provided with the necessary facilities to make them safe. Johnstown ought to have taught the necessity of examining reservoirs and dams, and of enforcing suitable standards of design and construction. Yet if we examine the statute books of Ohio we find no legislative provision of this kind whatever. Nor is there any provision for the study, mapping and gauging of the water resources. This is a necessary preliminary to a full understanding of the possible menace from uncontrolled waste.

With only two or three exceptions, conditions are precisely the same throughout the country. Even in Pennsylvania, which has probably suffered more grievously from dam failures than any other state, there is as yet no public knowledge of the design and condition of all dams, and no authority in any official or body to correct a dangerous condition.

Must we wait for another Johnstown or an Austin to change these things? Or will we learn from what might well have occurred in Ohio, and make a repetition of such disasters impossible? The lesson is plain. Will we profit by it?

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