The demand for cheap
food is fallacious. Pressing down the cost of
food has
one or all of three results on the producers of it (and its effect on
the producers is a vital concern with us as citizens of a State): We
reduce the standards of living of the producers in our own country; we
exploit the cheap labor and cheap lands of new and remote countries; or
we live
on the products of peasantry in other countries. These three are the
same, considered in the human result. If we are glad to meet the problem
of maintaining the standard of living for workingmen, we must be
equally glad to maintain it for farmers. There are reasons why we should
not attempt the same program for farmers as for workingmen: our problem
is to be willing to pay as much for food and other farm products as is necessary for the maintenance of the standard of living on the farms. -L.H. Bailey, What is Democracy? 1918
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