The Farmer's Stake in Greater Industrial Production

If the national economic problem can be summed up in a single sentence, it can be said to be a problem of increasing industrial production in the United States to a point somewhere near our productive capacity. If that were done, not all farm problems but many of the worst of them would disappear. The author of this article sets out to show what increased industrial production would mean to agriculture and to outline briefly various current proposals for achieving it. These he groups in three classes: (1) Those for increasing purchasing power first, on the theory that increased production would be bound to follow. (2) Those for stimulating production first, on the ground that purchasing power would then increase more or less automatically. (3) Those that would combine the two approaches in a sort of middle-of-the-road program. Whatever is done, he believes that Government nowadays is bound to play an important role; but the amount of governmental action will vary inversely with the amount of cooperation of business and labor.