Zimmerman Claims Further Farm Paternalism Will Cause More Serious Rural Disturbances

The following interview was given the Crimson by Carle C. Zimmerman, associate professor of Sociology.

"If the administration extends government paternalism over the farmers to a greater extent than at present the string of broken promises which must inevitably follow will precipitate disturbances more serious even than those now going on or threatening to break out. For regardless of the extent to which the government may carry its present policy of interference with the farmers, it cannot improve their condition more than it has already improved it.

"Government interference to raise farm prices is futile because farm products as a class are less represented in the business cycle than are industrial products as a class, and cannot, therefore, keep pace with cyclical price changes in industry as a whole.

"The farmer must, therefore resign himself to the situation and try to become as self-sufficient as possible. As a matter of fact, only 25 per cent of all the farmers of the country produce a surplus which can make them dependent upon trade with the industrial world. The rest are self-sufficing and can, if they really have to, support themselves without outside help. It seems certain that the eventual outcome of the present difficulty will therefore be a situation in which every farmer is self-sufficient, selling what surplus he has for what he can get for it. The sooner the agricultural leaders realize this and stop inciting the farmers against a government which fails only to do the impossible. the sooner the situation will clear.

"In preventing the foreclosure of farm mortgages, the government has wasted effort. For there is no landed aristocracy in America desirous of accumulating large tracts of workable property. When a mortgage holder forecloses on a farm, he often sells it back to its former owner for loss than the amount of the mortgage.