Monday, Oct. 08, 1923

A Proposal

Out of the West, bankers, farmers and men of politics went to the White House to present to President Coolidge their plan for alleviating distressed farmers. The callers were from the Ninth Federal Reserve District (Montana, North Dakota, Soutli Dakota, Minnesota, northern Wisconsin and the northern peninsula of Michigan). In their numbers were: Senator Norbeck, Representative Royal C. Johnson and ex-Governor Herried, of South Dakota; Senator Frazier and Representative Young, of North Dakota; N.J. Holmberg, Secretary of Agriculture of Minnesota.

The President, attended by Secretaries Hoover and Wallace, and by Eugene Meyer, Jr., Director of the War Finance Corporation, heard them, but gave no indication of the state of his feelings. Later the delegation conferred separately with Mr. Hoover and Mr. Wallace.

Their plan as presented to the President called for the revival of the United States Grain Corporation to undertake the orderly marketing and production of grain. They asked for lower railroad freight rates on grain and flour and for an extra session of Congress, called at least a fortnight in advance of the regular session (which starts Dec. 3), to pass appropriate legislation. They did not ask a fixed price for wheat or a higher tariff on that product.

They made the following argument in defense of their plan:

"We are asking for price stabilization through an organization under Governmental direction which will have the power, through cooperation on the part of the farmers, to guide them each year in determining the amount of acres to be seeded and thus (so far as is possible through acreage control) limit the production of wheat to such a point that there will be a proper domestic market for same. . . .

"It is claimed that overproduction and the lack of world markets are responsible for the situation. If such is the case, the above plan, if intelligently carried out, will solve their problems. "

Statistics show, however, that during 1922 there was produced in the world 531,000,000 bushels less wheat than was the average production during the period 1909-13.*

" Every bushel of wheat produced in the U. S. during 1922 was needed in the world and readily purchased. We have no burdensome surplus in the U. S. at the present time. "

Exports of wheat and flour from the 1922 crop have exceeded 230,000,000 bushels, which is far more than can be spared from the shorter crop of 1923. It is barely possible that instead of the price being held so low because of an overproduction of wheat the situation is caused by intelligent and organized buying on the part of our foreign customers."

* The average world production of wheat during 1900-13 was approximately 3,750,000,000 bushels.