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Bucking the Revolution. For the most part, farmers who reaped the high profits of the war years, paying off their debts and piling up capital assets, have been able to stand the postwar adjustment without real distress. The man hardest hit by the slump is the "new" farmer, who moved onto the farm after World War II when original costs were high. Such a farmer is Melvin Anderson, 40, who rents and farms 230 acres owned by a prosperous big farmer in Henry County, Ill., the "hog capital of the country."
Five years ago Anderson, married and the father of two small daughters, left his job in the John Deere Wagon Works in Moline, Ill., bucked the course of the farm revolution, and went back to the farm. He is in trouble. Twice in 1955 he had to sell his hogs before they were ready for market because he ran out of corn and could not afford any more. His luck on cattle was no better.
But Anderson, a stolid, philosophical farmer, came out of his troubles by tightening his belt. Last February, when he was due to make a big payment on his $1,200 International Harvester tractor, he sold it and bought a $600 John Deere model, with about the same power but fewer gadgets. ("I do the same work at half the price," he explains.) Last month when a payment came due on his 1952 car, he sold it and bought a 1950 model. With the difference, he had $275 left over to apply on other bills. He wanted a new harrow, but he looked at the size of his loan at the bank, and changed his mind. "I put in a lot of time on that old harrow," he said, "and it's good for another year."
Despite his obvious hardships, Republican Anderson is not in a mood of revolt. Of Secretary Benson, he says with understanding, "I'd hate to have his job." Of President Eisenhower's veto of the farm bill: "With everybody thinking he had to sign it because of politics, he proved to me that he done what he thought was the right thing."
For every farmer like Melvin Anderson, however, there is another of a different shade of opinion, ranging all the way to those who speak of both Eisenhower and Benson in four-letter words. With farms 93% electrified, with capital costs high, with a standard of living that reaches as high as television, big cars, fur stoles, and college educations for the children, farmers do not find it easy to reduce their standards as Anderson has done. Said a farmer in Corning, in southwest Iowa: "I was just looking at the month's electric bill— $30. Why that's what I used to make in a month as a hired hand back in 1939. And my wife goes down and buys two lamps and puts 100-watt bulbs in them. If I tried to make her live like I did, I'd have to tie her to a post first."
From the farms the harder times have spread to the small towns in the farm country. Hardest hit are implement dealers, who do most of their business with farmers. Auto dealers have been hurt, too, but not nearly as much. Clark Sheesley, the Buick-Chevrolet dealer in Cambridge, Ill. is doing 75% less business with farmers than he was a year ago, but his total business is down a still uncomfortable—but much smaller—25%.