I am reading a book called "An Hour Before Daylight" witten by former peresident Jimmy Carter.  Its the story of his boyhood. Since he and I are near the same age, there are many parallels, except he got to be president and he grew up in Plains, Georgia when I grew up in West Michigan.  The land was the most important part in our lives.  A farmer could make money (not a lot) on eighty acres.  We got mired in the great depression when growing a few items of food made a lot of difference.  His Father hac a lot of land and grew peanuts and cotton.  They hired a lot of help, mostly black, paying them about $1,25 per day.  In order to help the farmers, the Roosevelt administration came up with a farm program which took in  lot of farm lands, paying the farmer to grow crops that would build up the land and paying them to not grow some crops or cut back on the amount of some crops in order to keep a handle on farm prices and markets.  One program killed thousands of pigs to control pork prices, another dumped thousands of gallons of milk for the same reason. 

When my grandfather was approached by the government agency, he was absolutely opposed  and said it was a sin to destroy hogs when people were hungry.  He never ddid sign up for any government help.  Many other farmers here and in Georgia felt they were not going to kill Santa Claus and collected checks for planting soy beans and plowing them under to build up the land. Today most farm land is under government programs and crops are subsidised.  We accept that as normal.  

Jimmy carter said he was going to change  Washington but he could not outlast the system.  I hope I can.

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