THE CONGRESS: Political Peanuts

For nearly two months in the House cloakrooms and corridors, the word had been quietly circulated: 90% is worth $1.25. What it meant was that if Northern big-city Democrats would vote for rigid 90% parity farm supports, then the Democrats of the agricultural South would look kindly on labor demands for a $1.25 minimum wage law. The groundwork for the vote trade had been carefully laid, e.g., some 57,000 copies of pro-90% statements by C.I.O. President Walter Reuther and A.F.L. Leader George Meany had been sent out under the franks of Democratic members of the House Agriculture Committee. But when the high-parity bill reached the House floor last week, the farm-labor merger very nearly fell apart. And it was all because of the lowly peanut.

Philadelphia's Democratic Representative William Green sent up a long amendment that proposed, in a nutshell, to exclude peanuts from the list of "basic" farm commodities—wheat, corn, tobacco, rice, cotton—that would receive 90% parity. The Democratic leadership paid little attention to Green's move; similar amendments had been easily defeated in the past.

But the leaders failed to realize that candy manufacturers, hurt by the high price of the peanuts they use in their products, had done an effective job of lobbying. Said Congressman Green, who has some candymakers in his district: "A peanut candy bar sells for a nickel. If peanut prices were at a reasonable level, more peanuts could be put in the bar."

The Costly Seed. Texas Democrat Robert Poage, a peanut supporter, tried to put the blame on the candymakers. Waving a peanut bar over his head, Poage cried: "Mr. Chairman, here is a candy bar I just purchased within the last five min utes. This is the only peanut bar you can buy in the cloakroom. This peanut bar weighs, according to its wrapper, one and one-eighth ounces. You can make more than 14 bars out of one pound of peanuts, if you made them all out of peanuts." Poage slowly unwrapped the bar, continued darkly: "As a matter of fact, it has not got very many peanuts in it. Look inside." He broke the bar in half, held the pieces aloft, and shouted in outraged tones: "It has peanuts all over the outside, but on the inside nothing but corn syrup." Poage's conclusion: the candy manufacturers, by thus fooling their customers, were making profits of some 800%.