The Farm Bureau Movement PDF Download

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1921 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER II EARLY AGRICULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS AND WHAT BECAME OF THEM IT is difficult for most of us to-day, with our automobiles, our good roads, our telephones, our rural free mail delivery, our daily papers, and our social centers near at hand to realize just what life was like on the farm of fifty years ago. From occasional visits to isolated bits of country tucked far away here and there in some hilly or arid country and still evading the onward sweep of progress, we have perhaps gathered something of an idea of the simplicity of the rural life of that day. There are still certain sections where one may go and realize vividly to how great an extent the rural resident of that other period was forced to depend upon himself and his family and his nearest neighbors for all forms of amusement, instruction, and social intercourse. Seldom do we realize, however, the economic conditions under which he labored or the feeling of injury and resentment which he harbored. Immediately following the Civil War the homestead movement spread out over the Mississippi Valley territory and on into the frontier West with amazing rapidity. The introduction of labor-saving machinery coming simultaneously 1 enabled both old and new farmers greatly to increase their acreages. The rapid extension of the 1 The McCormick reaper was invented in 1834 but did not come into general use until about the time of the Gvil War. railways made long distance marketing feasible and the result was heavy overproduction and low prices for everything which the farmer had to sell. Farmers all over the country found it difficult to make a living. In the new western lands farms were heavily mortgaged and there was no money with which to pay interest. In the East and South farmers...