Finally, as everybody is saying these days, the most difficult problem is going to be to generate the will we need to solve our problems. Nobody has set it out more clearly, I think, than the Civil Disorders Commission, in which Senator Harris played such a key role. They talked about the danger of separate societies, hostile and unequal, we are getting into. But even in the face of this, we seem to have an enormous capacity in this country for rationalization.

You hear talk in Congress and around the country that we cannot get ourselves into the position of rewarding violence even in the face of the facts that for years we failed to reward patience or to redress injustice.

At the same time, the one piece of philosophy of the militants that seems to be embraced is separatism. We tell people for years that they are rejected, that they are not part of our society, and then when a number of people say "All right, if you do not want us, we do not want you, and we will do it on our own," white Americans with some piety go out and say, "See, that is the way they wanted it all along." I think we have got to strip away these rationalizations.

It is becoming a fashion now, I think, to talk about the year 2000. We heard that at the conference Secretary Freeman had in Washington. It still sounds a bit remote, and all things sound possible in the year 2000.

But the child born today in rural Alabama will just be reaching his most productive years in the year 2000. And what we do now, and over the next year or the next 2 years, is going to determine whether he will be a productive person, and whether he will be part of a more productive society, and a more just society. And it is this child, I think, finally, that we should have uppermost in our minds as we proceed in this conference.

Thank you very much.

Senator HARRIS. Our thanks to you, Bill, for telling it like it is. It reminds me that when I was a boy in Future Farmers of America, we told folks like my dad how to farm better, and they had a story which was current at that time of the county agent coming around to the farmer and trying to give him literature, which he rejected, saying "Listen, boy, I ain't farming half as well as I already know how."

I think that one thing we have gained from what Bill has had to say, is that we ought to keep uppermost in our minds-that while we are studying how better to reach the problems that are involved in the rural-to-urban shift, we are not acting half as well as we already know how, nor doing half as much as we know is necessary.

I think that is the message here. I think it is one that we ought to take to heart.

AFTERNOON SESSION

Senator HARRIS. The conference will be in order.

We begin this afternoon's session with a panel on "The Basic Changes in the Structure of Rural Areas."

I meant to announce earlier that the proceedings of this conference will be printed in book form, and you will have an opportunity, each of you who have taken part in the conference, to secure copies of the papers which are delivered here.

Our first speaker this afternoon served as Executive Director of the President's National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty, and is vice president of the University of North Carolina, Mr. C. E. Bishop.

Biographical Sketch: C. E. Bishop

Vice president, the University of North Carolina; president, American Agricultural Economics Association; member, Science Advisory Committee of the Secretary of Agriculture, and National Manpower Advisory Committee; Executive Director, the President's National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty; major research contributions in the areas of economic development, labor mobility, and income distribution.

STATEMENT OF C. E. BISHOP, VICE PRESIDENT, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you, Senator Harris, ladies and gentlemen, the title of my paper is "Rural Man in the System." Most of us grew up believing that if we really wanted something we could work hard, set our minds to it, and get it. In other words, we believed that we had the power to achieve that which we desired. But there is an everincreasing number of people in our society who do not believe that. They say that people are poor because "the system" makes it impossible for them to escape from their circumstances. As I heard this over and over and over in testimony before the President's National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty, I asked myself, "What are the people trying to tell me? What do they mean by the system'?" I concluded that what they were talking about was lack of power. Their view was that the poor do not have within their control the economic, social, or political power to rise above their present circumstances.

We cannot say to a man "This much of what you are is the result of 'the system' and this much of what you are is the result of your own decisions and circumstances." But we do know that in our dynamic Society structural changes are continuously taking place over which individuals have little or no control, which do, in fact, have quite serious implications for them. It is the purpose of this paper to indicate how changes in economic structure have affected man and his economic environment in rural America. Emphasis is placed upon the processes of development and adjustment rather than upon the current. situation. Unless we understand the processes of development we shall be unable to understand the options that will be available to us in the future.

THE DYNAMICS OF PLENTY

This Nation has been able to achieve an abundance of food and fiber through the commitment of large amounts of resources to discover and use ever more productive means of producing and distributing farm products. We take our food and fiber for granted. We know that there is an abundance, but we do not stop to ask how it was obtained.

Most of the improvements in production are capital using. They increase the productivity of capital and provide incentives to use more capital in production processes. On the other hand, the changes in technology are laborsaving. By increasing the productivity of capital relative to that of labor, they provide incentives to substitute capital for labor in production processes.

Many of the improvements in technology require large investments. This is particularly true of machinery and equipment. Much of it cannot be purchased economically if it is to be operated only for short periods of time. The purchasers usually seek to obtain a size of business consistent with efficient operation of the machinery employed. Thus, technological improvements not only make it possible for a man to produce more, but provide an incentive for him to do so in order to use the technology efficiently.

There is yet another characteristic of technical change that we should emphasize. Most of the modern improvements in technology are applicable only to certain products. Because of the large investments required, and because of the increasing complexity of management, the improvements encourage specialization in production.

Thus, the vast improvements in technology have given us an abundance of food and fiber, and they have been accompanied by a dramatic increase in the amount of capital employed in farming, destruction of farm jobs, a transfer of human resources from agriculture, and widespread merger of farming operations. But the forces have not stopped at the farm boundary. They have altered the entire structure of rural America.

THE REORGANIZATION

One of the most dramatic aspects of economic reorganization resulting from changes in technology has been the consolidation of farms. Since 1940, the number of commercial farms in the United States has decreased by almost one-half.

In spite of the fact that there has been a very heavy attrition rate among small farms and a substantial enlargement in the size of the remaining farms, no dramatic changes have occurred in the concentration of production among farms. The largest 10 percent of the farms produced 24 percent of farm production in 1949, 46 percent in 1959, and 48 percent in 1964.1 On the other hand, the smallest 20 percent of the farms produced about 3 percent of the production in 1949, 1959, and 1964.

Many technological improvements also have increased the productivity of capital relative to land. The greatly increased productivity of capital and the separation of what were once intermediate production steps into specialized activities has weakened the ties between farm commodities and land. In the case of some products, the productivity of capital has been increased so much that the commodities are now referred to as nonland based. For example, mass production techniques similar to those used in the production of nonfarm products are now used in the production of broilers, eggs, beef, and hogs. The boundary between farm and nonfarm becomes less visible each year. We would be in error to assume that the process of structural change in farming has been completed. We can gain insights into the pressures for change by looking at the ret

comparison with what these re ment. A recent study prep

shows the narit

for resources in agriculture in could earn in nonfarm employS. Department of Agriculture by size of farm in the

farm

W. Wilcox, Director mmittee on Antitrust r 1967.

Oth Cong., first sess.,

In 1966, only those farms selling $20,000 or more of products per year received a return for labor, land, and other capital, equivalent to what they could have received in alternate uses of their resources. The returns from farming as a percentage of the returns that could be received from alternative uses of the resources used in farming decreased directly with decreases in the size of the farm. We should not conclude, therefore, that adjustments in the size and structure of farms have been completed. Quite the contrary, changes in the future are likely to be as pronounced as in the past.

Two research workers at this university recently made projections of changes in the South from 1966 to 1980. If these projections should be correct, there would be a 39-percent reduction in man-hours of labor used in farmwork in the South between 1966 and 1980, and a 48-percent increase in consumption of farm capital.3

The forces sketched above have made a similar impact upon many industries in the United States. The impact has been particularly heavy, however, in the natural resource-based industries, including farming, forestry, fishing, and mining. All of these industries are located predominantly in the rural areas. Since other jobs have not been created to offset the decline in employment in the natural resource-based industries, technological change has been accompanied by a decrease in employment in the rural areas.

Technological changes also have had a very pronounced impact upon rural communities. The new techniques of production, transportation, and communication have greatly increased the market area served by firms. Today, a distributor of farm equipment services a much larger area than he did in the old days, and a buyer of farm products has a much larger market area. What we have done is to pull activities out of small towns and regroup them into larger towns and cities.

The Commission on Rural Poverty had access to one study showing that for some of the Midwest, the economically viable community today is 100 times as large as it was 50 years ago. As many farmrelated jobs have been transferred from rural villages, they have been left behind as empty shells, having little or no economic viability.

Because economic growth has been more effective in destroying jobs in rural areas than in creating jobs, a large share of our communities in rural areas have fewer people working today than they had 25 years ago. The rural areas, therefore, face a real dilemma. The people living there want the same goods and services enjoyed by people living in other areas. But when employment is less than it was 25 years ago, there is little likelihood of being able to provide even the basic services. There has been less change in local government structures than in economic and social structures. We are trying to perform our governmental services with the same basic structure that we had in 1915. There is, therefore, a widespread failure on the part of local governments to prepare people for living in the modern economy. The evidence of inferior public services is quite clear in the schools, hospitals, libraries, and roads. Our government structures are clearly out of context with the economy and with the society in which we live.

3 Vernon R. Eidman and Charles Little, Research Problems Posed by Prospective Changes in the Demand for Nonhuman Resources in Southern Agriculture. A paper presented at a symposium sponsored by the Southern Farm Management Research Committee, Atlanta, Ga., March 29-30, 1967.

THE EXODUS

The structural changes in rural America have resulted in a massive exodus of people from farms and small villages of the Nation. We had 1.3 million people per year in the 1940's leave the farms to search for jobs elsewhere, a million per year in the 1950's, and 750,000 last year. The process continues.

The migration during the last 25 years probably represents the most massive migration of human beings ever recorded. The net movement off the farms, not to mention the rural communities, amounted to almost 30 million people-a massive exodus. But it did not really concern us as a Natoin. What did we do to guide these people? What kind of public policy do we have to assist them in deciding where to go?

Off-farm migration operates largely through an informal process dependent largely upon friends and relatives. The results are evident. in the patterns established by migrants. The significance of established streams of migrants is demonstrated clearly in a study by Kain and Persky as follows:

The typical rural, Negro lifetime migrant tends to move to large urban areas (greater than a million in population) outside of the South. The white movement is more diffused and has a marked orientation toward medium-sized northern cities and the metropolitan areas of the South itself. While the southernborn whites and Negroes each sent about 21⁄2 million (2.61 and 2.47 respectively) individuals to cities larger than a million outside of the South (1950–60), only 0.42 million Negroes went to nonsouthern cities of between 250,000 and a million as compared to 1.42 million whites. Moreover, all SMSA's greater than 250,000 account for only 60 percent of the whites leaving the South as against 89 percent of the Negroes. With respect to movements within the South, only 0.86 million Negroes left their State of birth to move to southern SMSA's greater than 250,000 as compared to 2.86 million southern whites.

The 5-year migration series (1955-60), suggests no recent alteration of the basic pattern. Thus, 25 percent of the white outmigrants from the South moved to rural areas in the North and West, as compared to 8 percent of the Negro outmigrants. Within the South, southern cities account for 72 percent of all southern whites moving to urban areas, but only 55 percent of all southern Negroes. Moreover, there is evidence that Negroes moving North move in stages; first to a southern city, then a northern one. If this is so, the differences are even larger than indicated here. It is also important to note that these figures include considerable interurban migration. If the rural-urban stream could be isolated, it is likely that the pattern would become even sharper, with rural Negroes much less reluctant to move North than their white neighbors * * *. Fifty-eight percent of Negroes born in the South Atlantic Division and now living elsewhere, live in the four North Eastern SMSA's greater than a million (Buffalo, New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh). Similarly, about 40 percent of the Negro lifetime migrants from the East South Central Division have moved to the five East North Central SMSA's greater than a million (Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Milwaukee). Finally about 36 percent of the same group from the West South Central Division live in the four Pacific SMSA's greater than a million (Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle). Thus, not only have Negroes from the South moved to large metropolitan areas, they have moved along clear-cut lines to their destinations, forming at least three major streams, one up to the eastern seaboard, another up the Mississippi River to Ohio and Michigan, and one westward to California.

The pattern is more diffused than for whites. While whites from the three divisions also tend to move along these streams, there is a much greater willingness to cross longitudinal lines and to go to smaller places.*

4 John F. Kain and J. J. Perskey, "The North's Stake in Southern Rural Poverty." ch. 17, Rural Poverty in the United States, National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty, 1967.