Agriculture: A Hard Row to Hoe

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Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman speeds to the Pentagon, leaps out of his limousine, and rushes into a basement locker room, ripping off his tie as he runs. Down the stairs bounds Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, unbuttoning his shirt on the way. Within minutes, the two have changed their clothes and are on the squash court, engaged in a fierce, relentless competition. "One of these days," remarked a spectator at a recent match, "we're going to find both of them stretched out on the floor dead."

Freeman is a furiously aggressive player, flailing at the ball as if it had done him some unforgivable injury. McNamara, a sly tactician, often insinuates his body between Freeman and the ball. When he does, the Secretary of Agriculture swings away at the Secretary of Defense—and Freeman is unapologetic about McNamara's resulting bruises. "Bob won't get out of the way," he says, "so what can I do? I gotta get my shot." Despite Freeman's determination, McNamara wins about three games out of every five, and Freeman walks off the court muttering disgustedly: "Aw, shucks!" But a couple of days later, he is back for more.

In these matches, Orville Freeman, 44, displays qualities useful to any U.S. Secretary of Agriculture—an all-out combativeness coupled with the ability to lose, mutter "Aw, shucks" and return to the fray. For Freeman's job is the most thankless in the U.S. Government. Freeman's predecessor, Republican Ezra Taft Benson, called it a "monster" and a "sordid mess." For 30 years, the Federal Government has been ineffectually wrestling with the ever bigger surpluses produced by U.S. farmers. In the process, the Agriculture Department has spent many billions of dollars, piled up huge stocks of surplus farm products, and entangled U.S. agriculture in a fantastic web of controls.

"Don't Let Them." Understandably, Freeman did not want the job. After Freeman was defeated in 1960 for a fourth term as Governor of Minnesota, his friend Senator Hubert Humphrey assured him that he would get a high post on the New Frontier—possibly Secretary of Agriculture. "I don't want to be Secretary of Agriculture," Freeman pleaded. "Don't let them make me Secretary of Agriculture." But that was the job Freeman was offered—and that was the job he took. Ever since, he has been working at it with all the desperate intensity of his nature.