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The long arm of war has already reached into the pockets 
 of the American farmer. 
 
 Foreign countries, once the best customers for his surplus, 
 have been shut off one by one. Even before the invasion of 
 the Low Countries and France, the farmer had lost one-fifth 
 of his export trade, excluding cotton. Peace, assuming a 
 Nazified Europe with high walls to keep out American goods, 
 will bring no relief. 
 
 The complaint of a farm surplus will probably grow. It 
 is a strange complaint in a land which is often called the rich- 
 est on earth, but in which many millions of people almost 
 never get enough to eat from one year's end to the other. 
 
 What can be done to solve the problem of this surplus? 
 What can be done to increase the farmer's income? What 
 can be done to get the hungry millions properly fed and 
 clothed? 
 
 First, farmers and their families must themselves be well fed. 
 
 Second, farmers must find a better market for their produce 
 among their fellow citizens who do not live on farms. 
 
 The vast majority of America's nonfarm families are wage 
 earners. They work in factories — textile mills, shoe and 
 clothing factories, canning and packing plants — and in the 
 transportation, communication, and wholesale industries. 
 
 One-third of all American families and single individuals in 
 1935-36 had to live on less than $780 a year.^ They could 
 spend for food on the average only 6 cents per person per 
 meal. If they could have spent 8, or 9, or 10 cents a meal 
 per person, hundreds of millions of dollars would have been 
 added to farmers' incomes. 
 
 When earnings of city workers rise, farm incomes also 
 go up. Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace recently 
 
 * Report of National Resources Committee, 1938. 
 
pointed out that in 1929, when pay rolls were 12 billion dollars 
 a year, farmers' incomes also totaled about 12 billion dollars. 
 During the depression farm incomes and pay rolls went down 
 together until in 1932 both stood at about 5 billion dollars 
 for the year. By the end of 1939, both had climbed back to 
 a level of between 8 and 9 billion dollars. 
 
 Farmers' incomes and industrial pay rolls rise and fall 
 together ! 
 
 The Wage and Hour Law helps farmers by requiring em- 
 ploj^ers (if engaged in interstate commerce or in the produc- 
 tion of goods for interstate commerce) to pay their workers 
 not less than 30 cents ^ an hour for their work. In 1939 
 many millions of dollars were added to workers' incomes. 
 Also, in 1939 cash farm income totaled half a billion dollars 
 more than the year before, when there was no Wage and 
 Hour Law. 
 
 Some farmers have feared that wage increases for certain 
 kinds of workers, especially those employed in processing 
 agricultural commodities, would mean lower incomes for the 
 growers of those commodities. That didn't happen in 1939. 
 A survey made by the United States Department of Labor 
 of canning factories in eight States showed that if all the 
 employees of such plants earning less than 30 cents an hour 
 had been raised to that figure, the increases would have 
 amounted to only three-fourths of 1 percent in the canners' 
 total costs — such a negligible increase that it should not be 
 passed on to the consumer. 
 
 Secretary Wallace also said: "I think the Wage and Hour 
 Law is a decided benefit to farmers * * * Changes in 
 the ability of consumers to buy have much greater effects on 
 
 2 For the greater part of 1939 the minimum wage was 25 cents. The 30-cent 
 rate did not become effective until October 24. 
 
farm prices than do marketing costs * * * j^ profits are 
 increased at the expense of pay rolls, farmers suffer along 
 with labor. A very large share of the pay received by those 
 with low incomes goes to buy food and clothing. Workers 
 receiving 30 cents an hour or less spend almost half their 
 incomes for food and clothing. If their pay is cut, half of 
 that cut must come out of their expenditures for farm 
 
 products." UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 
 
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 NOTE.^ — Under the Wage and Hour Law all labor employed by a 
 farmer on the farm in conjunction with or incidental to farming 
 operations is exempt from both the minimum wage and maximum 
 hour provisions. In addition, many thousands of employees working 
 on farm products in cotton gins, grain elevators, dairies, fruit and 
 vegetable packing plants and similar establishments are exempt from 
 either the hour requirements or from both the minimum wage and 
 maximum hour requirements. 
 
 For further information as to how the Wage and Hour Law affects 
 you, write to the Wage and Hour Division, United States Department 
 of Labor, Washington, D. C, or to any of the Division's regional or 
 branch offices. 
 
 UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR 
 WAGE AND HOUR DIVISION 
 
 --U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1940