HUSBANDRY: Cotton Crisis

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"Absurd . . . just damn nonsense . . . preposterous ... a bluff . . . midsummer madness . . . damn foolishness . . . just so much bunk," were typical of the epithets which Southern newspapers, cotton planters and agricultural officials heaped on the Board's proposal. Most economists figured that crop destruction might help the cotton merchant but not the planter himself. One Georgia legislator proposed that "we plow under every third member of the Farm Board." Counter proposals deluged the Board. Congressman Patman of Texas suggested that it destroy its own 1,300,000-bale holdings first as an example to the South. Senator Caraway of Arkansas advised the Board to buy up half of the 1931 crop in return for a pledge that the South will plant no cotton in 1932. Within 48 hours the Board's "one-out-of-three" scheme was dead on its hands and the Board lapsed into a troubled silence. Meanwhile came two develop ments which boded ill for the Board's existence after the opening of Congress. Pennsylvania's Senator Reed drafted a bill, supposedly with some form of Ad ministration backing, to abolish the Board altogether. The potent American Farm Bureau Federation announced that, in its opinion, the Farm Board after two years had failed to control surplus production; that therefore the Farm Bureau would resume its fight for the equalization fee.