Arthur Capper Quotes
Isn't the necessity for keeping a real American agriculture alive evident? Remember you can't make a peasant out of the American farmer, for he will merely quit and go to town, and you can't feed the city workers at the minimum cost unless you have an efficient and contented agriculture to back them up. Is it any wonder that the Farm Bloc has worked so hard to salvage the wreck of our greatest business from the slough into which the deflation period dropped it?
What happened is that farmers over the year became either industrialized mechanized agricultural enterprises or peasants and the later did exactly what Capper predicted—moved to the cities. Agribusiness thrived and small traditional farmers were ruined unless they adopted the new technologies.
Arthur Capper, 1865-1951, Governor of Kansas (Republican), U. S. Senator (Republican, KS), “The American Farmer and Foreign Policy”, Foreign Affairs, March 1923
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
At the time the vast majority of Americans were farmers. That is the tradition and reality which caused the Department of Agriculture to become one of the most important cabinet departments. However, by the 21st century the Department of Agriculture had over 100,000 employees plus many more consultants and contractors. They had done their job so well that productivity eliminated the need for most of the farms. And the number of people earning the majority of their living as farmers is less than 1 million. So there are only 10 farmers for each employee of the Agriculture Department.
Executed by the English for his part in the Easter Uprising. This was a creative idea to being technology to bear on small farms. America was exploring cooperatives and other devices of trying to allow people who were not rich and had little or not capital, to utilize the emerging technology that would be so important.
Coolidge's rhetoric did not reflect the fact that his administration was totally indifferent to the serious plight of the American farmer in the 1920's.
The House had been debating an agricultural subsidy bill. Family farmers had in certain years not been able to sell their produce for the cost of growing it and subsidies made up the difference. But in this particular year, farm prices were very high and the agricultural subsidies were “welfare for the rich.” Farmers who earned over a million dollars in a great agricultural year would get “subsidies.” Typically members of Congress were either opposed to agricultural subsidies or opposed. Congressman Kind had a more nuanced view.
Official `Russian Communist Party Publication. There was no way that the farming peasants could get money for their crops. They had to turn over most to the government to feed the cities. But without money, the peasants could not get the goods manufactured in the cities and there was little motivation for the peasants to farm.
Arthur Capper was an American politician from Kansas. He was the 20th Governor of Kansas (the first born in the state) from 1915 to 1919 and a United States Senator from 1919 to 1949. He also owned a radio station (WIBW in Topeka), and was the publisher of a newspaper, the Topeka Daily Capital.
