FARMERS: Runt Relief

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Michigan's Hart: "President Roosevelt reminds me of the man who came down from Jericho and fell among thieves because he certainly fell in with a dishonest lot when he fell in with the farm leaders."

New York's Wadsworth, onetime Senator, in his maiden House speech: "I am staggered by the character of this proposal. I am amazed at its infinite ramifications. I shiver to think of the bureaucracy to be set up with its tentacles reaching into every back yard."

New York's Clarke: "Filled with horrors and hellishness as this bill is, I'm going to support the President."

Illinois' Dirksen: "Oh boy! I hope it works!"

315-to-98-When vote time came loud cries of "No! No!" filled the chamber at the suggestion of a roll call to put each & every member on record as for or against the President's farm plan. But a roll call was forced and the bill passed 315-10-98. To expiate its insurgency on the economy bill, Tammany Hall swung its full House strength to the President and higher food prices for New York City.

In the Senate, First important Senate opposition to the House Bill came from South Carolina's longtime Senator Smith, chairman of the Agriculture Committee who went ostentatiously to work on a substitute measure. Said he: "If turning over to the Secretary of Agriculture an overlordship over every farm and the power to tax every processor is the only hope. I despair of the future." Senator Smith favored keeping his own cotton option plan and cutting out crop reduction payments except direct land leasing by the Government. Likewise he would do away with the proposed Federal license system for processors and reduce their tax to a point where it would pay land rents and no more. Dissatisfied Senators soon had ready 100 assorted amendments limiting the Secretary of Agriculture's power. "Job-Crop Produce" At Chairman Smith's committee hearings the loudest critic of the Roosevelt plan was John Simpson, president of the National Farmers Union, who wanted nothing less than outright government price-fixing. Cried he:

"This bill sure is an experiment. You've started something when you attempt to regulate 30,000,000 men, women and children on the farm. It's impossible to control production by acreage. You've got to get God on your side before you can. The land-leasing action may result in a scandal that stinks to high heaven—a scandal that'll wreck the Democratic Party. For a job-crop producer this bill is a wonder."

Lost; $350,000,000. Into the general farm discussion was tossed a harsh statistic—$350,000,000. This was an estimate by Henry Morgenthau Jr., new Farm Board chairman, of how much of that agency's original $500,000,000 had been lost during the Hoover Administration in futile attempts to peg wheat and cotton prices. The Board's assets consisted of $38,000,000 in cash and about $112,000,000 in "good loans," the balance having disappeared in another historic "farm relief experiment."