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So I had made some study of this situation myself. I think I wrote up this little episode in one of my annual reports. So I knew that there was a grave reluctance to go back onto the farms, even among people who had had a farm background. I finally came to the point of recommending to our employment people that they cease trying to get unemployed machine tool makers to go work on farms. I thought that he should ask how many of the great horde that were waiting all day in the employment office had been raised on a farm, or how many had ever lived on a farm, and then we should concentrate on that group and try to get them to go and do farm work, because at least they had some competence for it and should have some reasonable familiarity with it. It was very difficult to do anything even with those who had been raised on farms. You just couldn't persuade them to go.

So I knew that, but I was surprised at Davis's statement that the factories furnished employment for the surplus people of the farms. I checked that with Henry Wallace, and I checked it many years later with Wickard. I found that that was really a very important items in their minds - surplus people on the farms must be drained into the cities and must have factory stimulation.