The National Farm School conference at its sessions at the Hotel Biltmore, New York, adopted a resolution pledging the support of the women delegates in forming an auxiliary to assist financially and otherwise in the expansion of the National Farm School at Doylestown, Pa. It was decided that the school should become co-educational.
Woman’s achievements in farming were described by the women who have won success in that field. Miss Sophie Irene Loeb presided.
Mrs. Maric J. King, owner and manager of St. Ives Jersey Farm, Salmon, Idaho; Miss M. Van Rensselaer, Director of the College of Home Economics at Cornel University and Mrs. Dora Stockman of the State Board of Agriculture. East Lansing, Mich., delivered addresses.
Mrs. Mary Fels, famous Single Tax advocate, addressed the conference. Miss Loeb, the chairman, in introducing the speaker said that on her recent visit to Palestine she encountered at every step the work of Mrs. Fels.
“All my efforts,” Mrs. Fels declared, “have been connected with land. It is my deep conviction that no social problem can be solved without carrying out the ideas of Henry George and of my late husband. Only when the community will claim for itself the values created by the community, will not permit landowners to tax the population and will leave to the landowner only what he has earned by his private work on the land, will social conditions be improved.
“By giving employment on the land to the unemployed, instead of charity, we are helping him without degrading him.” Mrs. Fels declared. She spoke of the many efforts made by the late Joseph Fels to give the unemployed work on vacant lots. “Mr. Fels established farm colonies in England which proved very effective. When, in the year 1921, he came to London and saw the wretched conditions under which the unemployed were huddled together in the Poplar district workhouse, he purchased a large stretch of land in London and later in Hollesly Bay and placed there a large number of the unemployed. The farm colonies had an advantage over the cultivation on vacant lots in that it also offered an opportunity for artisans, storekeepers, etc. However, Mr. Fels very soon found that this effort was bound to fail because of the many taxes levied on the agricultural producer. The farmer had to pay for transportation to the city and had to pay to the duke who happened to own the land of the market place another halfpenny for each basket he brought in. He also had to pay rates to the government, which rose with the increasing production. This led Mr. Fels to Henry George and to the adoption of the Single Tax idea.
“I am happy that in the last few years the Single Tax movement has taken root in almost every country of the world and that the vacant lot cultivation, farm colonies and especially the school gardens have been started in many countries, including Palestine, where I saw with a great deal of satisfaction the school garden supervised by Miss Deborah Kallen.”
The high productiveness of the American farmer, his abandonment of the farm because of the low return on his in vestment, the way in which he suffers from low prices by producing bumper crops and the need for reasonably stabilizing the price of farm products were some of the things discussed by former Governor Frank O. Lowden of Illinois at the morning session.
Mr. Lowden pointed out that the aggregate capital of the farmers, which was $47,000,000,000 in 1919-1920, decreased to $32,000,000,000 last year, on the basis of figures compiled by the United States Department of Agriculture.
Mrs. Luther Burbank attended the session to hear Gertrude Farquharson Boyle’s address on “Luther Burbank as an Inspiration to Youth in Agriculture.”
CORRECTION
In our Digest of June 6 under the head “German Jewish Paper Proposes Commission, etc.,” there was an unfortunate error in the second sentence referring to the attitude of Herr Paul Nathan of Berlin on the subject of Jewish land settlement in Russia. It was not Herr Nathan, one of the leaders of the Hilfsverein, the German Jewish relief organization, but the “Juedische Wochenblatt,” a Jewish weekly of Berlin, that viewed the reports regarding the favorable prospects for Jewish land settlement in Russia is ex-aggerated.
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