National Affairs: Brain Storm

Some administrations take office dreaming mainly of dividing the spoils, others dreaming mainly of doing great deeds. But there comes a time in every administration when dreamers fall out. Last week that time came to the Roosevelt Administration. The fact that it was caused largely by conflicting zeal among the President's followers did not dampen the rancor it produced.

Slap in Face. One afternoon a roomful of newshawks faced Secretary of Agriculture Wallace in his office with Agricultural Adjustment Administrator George Peek stony-faced at his elbow. The Secretary explained that: 1) the production of corn and hogs must be cut because the export of pork had fallen off; 2) the packers would be handed a code which provided the Government access to their books, power to control their margin of profit; 3) the AAA's milk marketing agreements were unsatisfactory and would have to be revised to control dairy production.

Mr. Peek said nothing. An oldtime Equalization Fee advocate, he had persistently argued that the solution of the farm problem lay not in a vicious thwarting of Nature but in increasing markets, in plugging world markets. He had opposed unduly rigid restrictions on packers and their profits. He had put through the "unsatisfactory" milk marketing agreements. To Mr. Peek the Secretary's remarks were a slap in the face, and though Mr. Wallace delivered the slap, the author of the slap was Braintruster Rexford G. Tugwell.

Mr. Peek, like NRA's General Johnson with whom he was once a partner in the Moline Plow Co., is rated a "Baruch man." Ever since President Roosevelt gave him the AAA he has been fighting clear of the Braintrusters who stood close to Mr. Wallace in the Department of Agriculture—Assistant Secretary Tugwell, Columbia professor, and AAA Counsel Jerome Frank, disciple of Felix Frankfurter. They favored restricting production, holding down the profits of processors and distributors. Their aim was not just recovery for the farmers but a radical step: permanent "socialization" of the processing and distributing business. When they could not get their way with Mr. Peek, Mr. Tugwell and allies set about maneuvering him out of his job.

So little use had Mr. Peek for their ideas that he had practically picked a separate AAA staff to avoid having to deal with the Braintrusters. Unable on his part to oust Mr. Frank, one of his most outright opponents, he had retained at his own expense Frederic Lee as his personal counsel. First result of the two factions working at cross purposes was virtual sabotage of the AAA program. The Braintrusters held up codes for packers and food distributors because they wanted stiff provisions to socialize those industries. Mr. Peek held back on crop restriction plans because he wanted more efforts made to export surpluses.