Agricultural Aid Quotes
Executed by the English for his part in the Easter Uprising. This was a creative idea to being technology to bear on small farms. America was exploring cooperatives and other devices of trying to allow people who were not rich and had little or not capital, to utilize the emerging technology that would be so important.
There were many new scientific agricultural techniques emerging but most farmers knew nothing about them. Garfield wanted the Federal Government to provide education, communications and technical assistance to farmers. However, that was a radical notion and many did not see that as a proper role of the Federal Government. The President gave the example of an early Federal role of establishing lighthouses to protect and assist mariners sailing along the American coasts. Most Americans had accepted helping the maritime industry. Why not assist agriculture? The subsequent Federal role in Agriculture was one of the major factors in making the American farmer the most productive in the world as new techniques would be communicated to farmers rapidly and implemented without much delay.
The House had been debating an agricultural subsidy bill. Family farmers had in certain years not been able to sell their produce for the cost of growing it and subsidies made up the difference. But in this particular year, farm prices were very high and the agricultural subsidies were “welfare for the rich.” Farmers who earned over a million dollars in a great agricultural year would get “subsidies.” Typically members of Congress were either opposed to agricultural subsidies or opposed. Congressman Kind had a more nuanced view.
