FARMERS: Ache, Agony, Anguish

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AAA II is supposed to induce farmers to limit crops in return for benefits—soil conservation payments, crop loans, crop insurance, Government purchase of surpluses. If these inducements do not work the Act provides for compulsory controls—marketing quotas (such as are now in force for cotton and tobacco) invoked after two-thirds of the growers approve in a referendum. If crop prices continue falling however, Mr. Wallace declared himself opposed to outright price fixing on the basis of production cost, which "would soak the consumer, sink the farmer, and mean uncontrolled production."

"The surest way for wheat farmers to get their fair share of the national income," said he, is for the Government to give the farmer the difference between his market price and what his crop would have brought in some Golden Age like that of 1909-13. Such payments are authorized in principle by AAA II whenever appropriations are made for them. Mr. Wallace boldly suggested that the best way to finance the payments would be to revive processing taxes, which the Supreme Court found illegal. "Why not use this kind of a tax once more?" he demanded. "We know it will work because it has worked."

"Roads to Disaster." AAA's misfortunes have already revived a host of rival farm panaceas. Most popular is the long talked of "domestic allotment" plan, permitting unlimited crop production and assuring producers a profit on that part of their crop consumed in the U.S., the balance to be sold abroad at world prices. At Fort Worth Henry Wallace told cotton farmers that domestic allotment would be a "road to disaster." Bristling on the platform was Texas' Commissioner of Agriculture J.E. McDonald, a champion of domestic allotment. As soon as the Secretary left town, Commissioner McDonald announced he would organize Statewide opposition to AAA and all its works. Sniffed Mr. McDonald: "The officials of his [Wallace's] organization are merely holding their AAA jobs to keep from leaning on WPA shovels."