DOWN ON THE FARM

[Music] Photography sees with the eye of a camera it makes records of places people and events photography lets you see the world about you without ever leaving your classroom it's your window on the world photography shows shows how and why things happen and now through photography kodak brings you this edition of screen news digest [Music] the American farmer this is his story from the wooden plow to the mighty harvest an agricultural revolution down on the farm [Music] from colonial times to the dawn of the 20th century the farmer was the backbone of the American economy he symbolized the sturdy pioneer who fed the nation's body and nourished its spirit with his courage fierce independence and self-reliance down on the farm in the early 1900's families worked from before sunup to after sundown seven days a week mothers cooked on wood-burning stoves by the light of kerosene lamps just as their own mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmother's had done before them the hours were long and the life was hard and still more than three out of every five Americans lived on farms as the United States entered the 20th century [Music] but change was coming a revolution was taking place industry and immigration were remaking the face of America a new concept in industrial production the assembly line was increasing output and raising wages the United States economy was booming and the growth of cities and urban areas was luring more and more young people away from the farm the balance of population was swinging from the rural to the urban areas [Applause] Charles Lindbergh the Lone Eagle through the Atlantic as Americans in cities and on farms soared through the Roaring Twenties sharing a prosperity that it seemed would never end [Applause] but end it dipped and the United States was thrust into the Great Depression bread lines formed from coast to coast and Men sold apples on street corners despair was everywhere in 1933 Franklin D Roosevelt became president as the crisis deepened sharecroppers and migrant farmworkers lined the highways of many a Midwestern state out of work with no place to go as farm prices dropped and dropped and dropped [Music] huddled together in makeshift shelters life was a day-to-day existence [Music] after a lifetime of labor there was no security no future no hope one man spoke for the young and the caravan forced out on the farm cause if we hadn't get to know they labor to do when I get in six bit from the dollar then we can't make honest they stand living at it and that's the reason where I on highway 61 right today and we want to get a place to live and work and make an honest day's leaven that's what I'm married a woman to take care of her make her honest least eleven that's what we're going to do if there's any change at all already mortgaged and deeply in debt the American farmer could not beat his payments when corn brought three cents a bushel and the people in the cities didn't even have three cents to buy it [Music] farm failures foreclosures evictions became commonplace at the height of the Depression more than a thousand families a day were forced to give up their farms [Music] taking what little they could carry with them the evicted families drove off in search of some distant better life for many it would be a never-ending journey this was a bleak and bitter time for an industry that had been considered the life blood of a nation and the worst was yet to come droughts and dust storms swept across the breadbasket of America in the middle 1930s turning millions of acres of fertile farmland into eroded ravaged wasteland [Music] never in a hundred years had the forces of mana nature.combined to punish a people whose survival depended on what they could draw from the soil [Music] cattle roamed the dried-up range pawing the dirt looking for water holes that had long since disappeared much of the Middle West looked like an American Sahara as a drought continued the soil eroded and the long-suffering farmer waited and hoped hoped and waited the lost sin crops and cattle ran into the tens of millions of dollars animals that survived were little more than skin and bones years and this is the worst I've ever seen in the land that I got anything out of pop the government paper not the plan we are this for the American farmer was the darkest hour before the dawn [Music] [Laughter] government and industry would come to the aid of the hard-pressed families down on the farm [Music] giant irrigation and reclamation projects were begun to harness rivers and produced power the waters at once destroyed and eroded would now become the servant of man the results of the dams and power plants were dramatic and far-reaching stretching out for thousands of square miles to enrich the lives of millions of farm families in many rural areas in the early 1930s only two out of every 100 farms had electricity now it was at the fingertips of 10 and 20 and 30 times that number kerosene lamps were stored away power had come down on the farm to change and improve serve and entertain old and young as they did their chores and lived their lives [Music] the thirties made way for the 40s the Great Depression was ending Europe was at war and the American farmer was once again producing a peak capacity to meet the agricultural demands of domestic and foreign markets [Music] December 7th 1941 Pearl Harbor is attacked and America goes to war 12 million men are called to the colors and a third of them come from down on the farm [Music] never before has the United States needed so much from its farms and never before have the farms been so undermanned the shortage becomes so acute that servicemen in America are sent to farms during harvest time to bring in crops that might otherwise rot in the ground and the demands of a wartime economy stimulate new ways to increase agricultural output now virtually all to the farmer bros finds already market [Music] the American GI wherever he goes is the best fed fighting man in the world the road to peace is long and hard but finally the victory is won the infamy of Pearl Harbor is avenged when the Japanese surrendered to General MacArthur in 1945 the big parade begins G is coming home to signal the start of the greatest decade of growth in American history agriculture will play an important part in the exploding economy as machines grow bigger and more productive by 1950 farming has advanced faster and farther in the United States in half a century than in any other country in the entire previous history of the world and one man hour of farm labor yields more than five times as much food as it did at 1920 the technological and scientific revolution extends into and throughout all phases of American farm life chemical breakthroughs and biological discoveries multiplied production and improve quality additives in supplements enable chickens under controlled conditions to lay as many as seven eggs a day [Music] farm assets total almost two hundred and fifty billion dollars two thirds of the value of all corporation assets in America [Applause] the flood tide of agricultural Plenty is enough by 1960 to feed and clothe half the world the young the new generation of farmers is also caught up in the challenges and opportunities provided by America's agricultural revolution the 4-h clubs the Future Farmers of America attract millions of boys and girls who learn by doing this is a new kind of pioneer who one day may be operating and managing farms where computers plot every facet of agricultural life already automation has come to many an owner down on the farm warren north of Brookstone Indiana is one he is in a sense a push-button farmer by using a complex system of buttons and switches he can feed his cattle automatically spinning augers pushed the fodder from the storage silos to the cattle troughs Farmer North can if he wants blend several kinds of feed with the push of a button and supplementary vitamins of hormones can also be dropped into the auger before it begins the final leg of its automated journey to the waiting cattle [Music] in ten minutes push-button farming has done a job that once would have kept five men working for half a day but increasing production is not without its problems there is a widening gap between the price of farmer gets for his crops and their cost of the supermarket and despite government efforts at crop control agricultural / production averages between five and ten percent each year and yet even this overproduction may someday be a virtue if the population explosion continues a Swedish economist good Armour doll has predicted that before the end of the 1970s the world will need every shred of food and fiber that the United States can grow the challenge until then is to find new and constructive ways to utilize America's mighty harvest and to make the nation's agricultural abundance not a curse but a blessing [Music]