Relief, Yet Again

Some 30 miles northwest of Chicago is a model farm. It is operated wholly by electricity. Cows are curried with vacuum cleaners, milked with suction machinery. Automatic clocks flash strong lights on roosting hens in the evening and before dawn to arouse them to the possibility of laying extra eggs. Feed is ground and mixed by electrical machinery. Humming motors run corn-husking devices. Electric clocks dump pecks of oats into feed bins at 5 a. m. Electricity warms incubators where motors revolve the eggs periodically. Chicks are automatically herded under ultraviolet rays to ward off the pip. Electric heaters keep the pigpen cosy.

Properly enough, this model farm is the property of Public Utility Tycoon Samuel Insull who operates it as a semi-advertisement of the Electric Age.

But the farmer claims to be poor.* He insists he can't pay his old debts, much less contract fresh ones for such new-fangled electrical equipment. So in an attempt to elevate his economic standing and put electric milkers, pigpen warmers and auto- matic cornhuskers within his reach, the Committees on Agriculture of the House and Senate last week began hearings on legislation for his relief.

No specific farm plan loomed up out of the fog of conflicting testimony. These facts, though, were developed:

1) The equalization fee is permanently interred in political history. No substitute has been found for it.

2) A new Federal board is required to help co-operative farm associations dispose of their price-depressing surpluses.

3) Such a board requires U. S. money, in amounts ranging from $100,000,000 to $1,500,000,000.

President Hoover refused to become entangled in the legislative details of a farm relief bill. He pointed to his St. Louis campaign speech for a general outline of his wishes, whereupon the Senate committee had it solemnly read into its hearings.

In the House, Iowa's Representative Gilbert N. Haugen, one end of McNary- Haugenism, sulked pettishly. Wedded to the equalization fee, he allowed Illinois' Thomas S. Williams to guide the hearings, stamp the bill with the Williams political trademark. In the Senate, Oregon's McNary, blithe and chipper despite defeat after defeat, exuded optimism.

All the old familiar lobbyists returned to speak their time-worn pieces in the farmers' behalf. The proceedings reminded one of an 1890 melodrama, revived and played straight.

In fact the ritual of farm relief hear- ings became so stupid that Oklahoma's Senator Thomas proposed a means of enlivening them. He would call tycoons of industry and finance--Henry Ford, John Pierpont Morgan, Charles Michael Schwab, Paul Moritz Warburg, Owen D. Young, John Davison Rockefeller Jr., Andrew William Mellon--and have them say what was wrong with the farmer.

Quoth Arkansas' quipsome Caraway: "Those men don't know a horse from a cow."

Rumbled North Dakota's dour Frazier: "Having robbed the farmers all these years, you think now they can help the farmers out?"

Suggested Alabama's hopeful Heflin: "We might at least find out how they robbed the farmers."

All of which was mere by-play to fill an idle hour, because the Tycoons all declined their invitations, except Henry Ford, who toyed with the idea as a public possibility longer than the rest.

*The U.S. farm population last year-- 27,511,000 --was at a 20-year low ebb. Only a large birth rate offset increasing migrations to the city.