Magazine Encourages Farmers to Organize, 1940

From the editorial page of the Feb. 1940 issue of The Southern Planter

Activities of labor unions are constantly in the news. Because of their powerful organizations, John L. Lewis, C.I.O’s militant president, and William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, have been able to accomplish miracles for the working man.

Improved working conditions, Social Security legislation, immigration laws, and the 40-hour week, undreamed of a few years ago, owe their very existence to the efforts of organized labor. Whether you approve of labor’s methods or not, you must admit that they working man’s lot has been enormously improved because of the vigorous leadership in the unions.

Contrast labor’s progress, if you please, with that of agriculture. Farmers work under precisely the same conditions as a generation ago. They have no Social Security benefits, save a niggardly old age pension when destitute. If a farmer worked but 40 hours a week, he would starve himself and his family. And strangely enough, the only direct aid agriculture has received from the Federal government—payments and benefits under the Agricultural Adjustment Administration—to offset industry’s tariff and labor’s manifold advantages, has been vigorously opposed by those in high political office from agrarian states, and, indeed, sniped at from some quarters by farm organizations and fair weather friends of the farmer. This sad state of affairs has come to pass because farmers are not united; they cannot act and vote as a unit; their own organizations are relatively small and weak, thus permitting them frequently to be controlled locally for purely political purposes.

Did you know that there are nearly 60 million people living in rural America?

The National Grange, America’s oldest and largest farm organization, has a dues-paying membership of only 800,000.

The American Farm Bureau Federation, whose courageous president, Ed O’Neal, did much to put across the farm adjustment legislation, has a membership of but 400,000.

The C.I.O. has a membership of around 4,000,000, and the American Federation of Labor, excluding the United Textile Workers of America and the International Union of United Automobile Workers, which have just received their charters, has a total membership of 3,800,000. Thus organized, labor boasts a membership of nearly 8 million as against agriculture’s 1.4 million.

Farm organizations cannot be built up from the top down; growth must start from the bottom. There is a job for the Grange or a farm Bureau local in every rural community of the South. There are capable men and women in your community ready to do that job. Won’t you help get them together? As local units become active, worthwhile county and state leadership will develop.