Hunt, How Can a Young Man Become a Farmer?

Dean Hunt of the California College of Agriculture is discussing ways for young men to pursue farming and how the federal government can help this happen. The only way to make farming attractive to young men, according to Hunt, is to give them an avenue for farm credit. A successful system of farm credit, however, he argues, must come from an adaption of European credit associations to fit with “American ideals, customs, and government methods.”

Hunt is basically advocating for a way to test the intelligence and aptitude of young men who wish to pursue farming as a way to find the best and the brightest. If this aspiring farmer is able to pass these tests, Hunt would like to see him loaned money at a very low rate (2 or 3%, similar to the government’s postal savings deposits). The entire question, for Hunt, “is one between the rewards of capital as compared with the rewards of labor…[and] no such opportunity exists in the open country” to maintain the rewards of one’s labor. Hunt merely wants “an even chance [for farmers] with their wage-earning brothers” as he sees this as not just a plan to help farmers, but one that will help the nation.

Related Documents

File	Date	Creator	Donated by
bf0914a.pdf	September 1915	Thomas F. Hunt