Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3206

Penciling on three-hole, ring-binder pages for a letter to the Editor of the Baltimore Sun

1933?

Original -> 1057

 

 

Dear Sir –

I want to ask a few questions about this New Deal.

     Has the dealing started or is the shuffling still going on? Did the last dealer have to throw up his deal because he dealt only to the RIGHT, or did the players all pass or refuse to play? Does the New Dealer deal Right and Left or only Left? Does he keep on shuffling while he deals? If it is experimental, is it another Noble one? With all the high cards, deuces, and Joker dumped uncooked into the presidential pot, is not the New Deal bound to be a Raw one? Will this New Deal be the end of the game or will there be another deal? If so, by whom?

     Yours for more light and leading ..

     I am a farmer — that is, I have a farm, 107 acres, in Maryland. Years ago I raised crops to feed the multitudes. I thought it the Christian thing to do. I did not realize the mounting penalties of the Law, amounting in 1932 in many instances to over one-half the farmer’s total produce (after turning it into money), nor did I realize that the more I produced the less money I would get for it. I drew my light out of past experience; I was a Backward Looker. Some of my most costly crops brought such poor returns I found I could save money by stopping the harvest and leaving them in the fields. All I ever made was this way. My mistake was that I invited my neighbors to come and take all they wanted, and they did so. I did not then realize that I was Dumping and that I was actually Cutting the Throats of other farmers by my cut-throat Competition, but I see it all now, although a little dimly at times. However, I have not sold or given away anything since then. The most I have done is to raise little food for my family but I now realize we should stop even this and so do our part to raise prices. I used to get fined a lot of taxes every time I raised anything, but it seems now I ought to be fined for not raising anything. If the Government won’t do that, then I will have to raise a lot of stuff so I can get paid for destroying it, just the same as other people can. Here’s hoping a Great Deal.

 

*because farming it never did pay and I can’t put in any crops for four years. How’d I make out with my taxes and mortgage payments? Well, there warn’t no losses on crops and things kinda run down, so taxes wasn’t much. I had time to get around to the store considerable and fetch horseshoes behind the courthouse with the boys, so I got to be deputy sheriff with right smart fees and then my unmarried daughter, she got a job in Home Economics & Child Welfare for our county, and she brings home right smart. So I am ready to what the president wants. If he will pay me the way things are, then O.K., but if he wants me to qualify for relief by raising some crops to be destroyed, that will be O.K. too, only I will want more money for that. I will paint “W.D.O.C” on the side of my empty barn so the whole county can see where I stand and the Government can pay me accordingly.

     Now Mr. Editor, what I want is a good handout dealt to me by our New Dealer. You see, I am anxious as anybody to turn to and help us farmers out, but one thing makes me uneasy! There are big camps of soldier-looking fellows in my county cleaning up the woods and fixing to plant trees, and they are layin’ out new roads and dams and public works for a lot more of them to work on. It seems like our new President’s so busy a-raisin’ wages right now and puttin’ down production, he ain’t got no time to think about the future (an’ him a young man too). What’s going to happen to the timber and lumber traders and all the building and other work dependin’ on ‘em with all this big over-production of timber in a few years? How are they going to keep on paying big wages with lumber such a drug on the market it won’t pay to cut it or saw it. Look at how the price of lumber went up in past years because they cut and burnt a plenty of it and didn’t plant any new stands. Ain’t the New Deal lining up to kill all this and send prices to the bottom? Maybe the Government could lock the woods up and fill ‘em full of fire wardens and big exterminators /?/ at fair wages and short hours and not let the new lumber come out and upset the market. But this minds me of the time the Government saved a lot of wheat by locking it up in the elevators and getting it insured. You know this pulled some hundreds of millions of taxes out of the Treasury, but it made the price of wheat all the time look like thirty cents. It’s the same with all them roads and public works. They put a lot of tax money in circulation, but when this money is spent for high wages and high prices and things, how is there going to be any demand for public works with all this big crop on hand? And then how can we find gals for our surplus labor to eat up more taxes without going on the dole?

     These things bothered me so much I had to get it straight, so I telephoned to our County Agent about it, and he came with the President of our Farm Bureau to explain things. He told me that Our President is the greatest statesman of every other time. He realizes that the only way they can save the business of the present day is to cut down the surplus, and he knows that in the future business is liable to have to be saved again the same way, so Mr. Roosevelt is having all these here trees planted and public works built so when the time comes for it they’ll be a-plenty of things to burn down and blow up and otherwise destroy. The County Agent said all this would save the soil and be good for the land so we’d be all better off when it’s all over. I asked him if there wasn’t danger of us farmers raisin’ too much crops on that good land, and he said, no; by that time there’d be another big war and we’d need all the crops we could raise. I reckon he’s right about that if we can’t find some other way to manage things. But right now I gotta have relief, at least till the Government gets to work on the boulevard they’re a-layin’ out past my place to the new National picnic grounds up in the hills and they get the new dam and power house a-goin’ up there. After that, maybe I won’t need so much relief. Here’s hoping.

                                 A. Hardy Tiller

 

Editor of /Baltimore/ Sun –

Please consider the following

For your letter columns.

     S. Heath, Elkridge, Md.