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Not all FSA borrowers have as enviable a record as the Walls. But not all farmers rescued by FSA from economic serfdom during the depression '30s were as able, enterprising or as hardworking. Even so the FSA record is good. In seven years FSA has granted $212 million of long-term farm ownership loans. Under set amortization and interest payment schedules farmers would have paid back $32.7 million by the close of the 1944 fiscal year. Actually the farmers have remitted $43.4 million. FSA Rural Rehabilitation loans (operating capital for low-income farmers unable to obtain commercial credit) have totaled $843 million. The farmers should have paid back $543 million of this by now; of this amount these low-income farmers have actually paid back all but $59 million.
American Dream. But no statistical summary of FSA profit & loss can measure the gain to U.S. society when the Wall family got their start. Clear of debt, Joe and Carolyne Wall are planning solidly for the future. Last week Farmer Wall was ready to thresh his 20 acres of oats—he figures on a yield of 40 bu. to the acre.
Barring disaster, his 42 acres of tall tasseling corn will be worth at least $2,500 in October. There is hay in the barn, and 46 hogs and eight milk cows. And Carolyne has a steady income from her flock of 140 laying hens, 200 pullets and 100 cockerels.
This fall the house and barn will be wired for electricity. Then the Walls will get rid of the smelly kerosene lamps, and out of her egg money Carolyne will buy an electric refrigerator—if she can find one. Joe might put a small radio in the barn so that he can hear music and news programs while he milks. Eventually the Walls will buy an electric washing machine, and a tractor to spell the mules.
When the Walls really let their postwar dreams run unchecked, they plan a trip to England where Joe was born. But they will come back. During the long hot Iowa nights they talk oyer plans to remodel the two-story, four-room house. Two bedrooms will be added on the north side. The present kitchen will be the dining room. A new kitchen will be built where the porch is now, and:—luxury of luxuries—water will be pumped in from the well.