NORTH CAROLINA FOOD CONSERVATION COMMISSION
RALEIGH, N.C.

June 4,

Boards of Trade, Chambers of Commerce Commercial Clubs & Merchants Associations in the State.

Gentlemen:

The commercial organizations of North Carolina are rendering a wonderful service to their communities and to the State and Nation in the crisis with regard to food and feedstuffs. Will you permit me to make two suggestions that are vitally important at this time? Perhaps you are already working along these lines. If you are, that’s fine. If not, you will readily see the importance of effort to these ends.

First: The farmers of almost every county in the State are being seriously handicapped because of the shortage of labor. These busy farmers haven’t time to go to town and spend hours or days looking for men or boys to help them, and yet this labor must come from the cities and towns. I believe that the commercial organizations of the State can more easily list and mobilize this labor than any other agency. I know of some that have already rendered invaluable aid in this manner. Your county farm demonstration agent very likely can furnish a list of the farmers needing additional help or you can let it be known through your local papers that you will serve as a clearing house for labor, listing those who will volunteer and the farmers needing labor. I believe your local papers will be glad to assist you in a labor-mobilization campaign.

Second: North Carolina is woefully lacking in the matter of established markets for corn, small grains, hay, peas, beans, etc. The absence of these markets has held back to a greater extent than most of us realize the movement for diversified farming and the producing at home of all of these products that we consume. We cannot expect our farmers to produce crops that they cannot sell readily and at such a price as the buyer would have to pay for the same product imported from the West. It is a notorious fact that in the vast majority of cities and towns in this State the merchants have been prone to take advantage to the utmost of the absence of such markets, refusing to pay anything like a fair price for products and thus, unintentionally, holding back the agricultural progress and prosperity of their county and State. This is shortsighted policy. If our merchants will offer the farmer a just and equitable price for his corn, small grain, hay and other crops we shall see wonderful development of our agricultural industry and increased prosperity not only for our rural districts but for our cities and towns as well, for it is more and more clearly demonstrated that even our largest cities are largely dependent for their prosperity and development upon the farming districts.

This matter of markets demands careful and mature consideration. For best results, the merchant purchasing the products in question should have facilities for shelling corn, grading corn, wheat, oats and other small grain and for the proper handling of other products. With a large warehouse, bonded in proper form, the financing of a huge amount of products becomes a comparatively easy matter as the National Banks loan on warehouse certificate for any staple products.

Our merchants should be willing to give to the home farmer the same price for corn or any other products delivered at his warehouse that he is compelled to pay for the same grade of Western products. And this year, he is not going to be able to get much of the Western products. The farmer should find it just as easy to get a fair and stable price for his corn, small grain, hay, etc. as he does for his cotton or tobacco, and our State is not going to prosper as it should until he does.

It is none too early to begin working upon the marketing proposition and I am sending you this reminder so that you will have ample time to see that your city and community is not without a proper market when it is needed. I will appreciate it if you will keep this office informed as to any plans you may formulate and any progress you make along this line. Any service which we may be able to render will be offered gladly.

Yours in the interest of greater North Carolina, raising its own food and feedstuffs and prospering because it does.

NORTH CAROLINA FOOD CONSERVATION COMMISSION,

By John Paul Lucas
Executive Secretary.