FARMERS: Parting

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While Ed O'Neal thereupon set himself the unwelcome task of selling his members compulsory control, Chairman Marvin Jones of the House Agriculture Committee introduced his own bill, which set the reserves so high that compulsory control would seldom operate. Superficially the House bill appealed more to farmers because it would allow them to receive benefit payments on larger crops—but actually, according to Ed O'Neal, money for the payments could not be authorized in the present budget situation and the whole control structure might collapse. At this juncture Henry Wallace, whom Ed O'Neal considered at least the uncle of the Senate bill, wrote to Senators Pope and McGill warning against the dangers of too much compulsory control, advocating larger reserves. When this was interpreted as a Wallace endorsement of the House bill apparently leaving the Farm Bureau stranded with the Pope-McGill Bill, Ed O'Neal began to wonder. When the House passed its bill last fortnight without Henry Wallace taking any steps to disown it, Ed O'Neal got sore.

Last week, as President O'Neal rose to his six feet to address 3,000 members of the Federation at their convention, he well knew that one of his audience was Henry Wallace. Scuttling his prepared speech, Ed O'Neal boomed: "The farmers are meeting opposition . . . even from our fighting Secretary of Agriculture. Secretary Wallace favors big granary supplies, and we just can't go along with him on that idea. ... If adequate money were available for big parity payments, then we would not object. . . . We want a measure with definite control written into the law. We hate to disagree with our good friend, the Secretary, but we cannot and will not compromise on this fundamental issue."

If Ed O'Neal expected to lure Henry Wallace into a debate, he was disappointed. Admitting to interviewers only that he found something to recommend in both House and Senate bills, the Secretary gave the convention's afternoon session an innocuous speech on general farming policies and the "sacredness of the soil," a speech which he asked them to repeat in their own neighborhoods. Many an observer wondered whether Secretary Wallace's split with the Farm Bureau Federation might be due to the caution of an available Presidential candidate, but one fact was unmistakable. When Henry Wallace and Ed O'Neal went back to Washington to help in the difficult job of hammering two farm bills into one. for the first time in four years they would not be working side by side.