Farm people make up an important part of our Western population. Knowing what farm people think about some of the critical issues of the day is a matter of real interest in gauging the pulse of Western public opinion. By interviewing periodically its more than seventy representative “key -observers" living in four carefully selected counties, the western regional office of the Division of Farm Population and Rural Welfare, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, United States Department of Agriculture, measures farmer thinking on a number of important or controversial issues. The report which follows summarizes the responses of these key observers to a series of prepared questions asked them during the month of May 1944. The questions touched on six major fields: (1) Post-war prospects for demobilized service men and returning defense workers, (2) school consolidation and expansion of the school program, (3) Government control over agricultural production and prices, (4) Economic security, with special reference to problems of medical care, (5) wages and standards of living, and (6) international relations.
