Runt Relief

"For 20 years my business was raising and selling pure-bred Duroc Jersey hogs. I raised hogs that had so much sex appeal I sold 'em as high as $500 apiece. . . . It's not the young sow with her sex appeal that produces a litter of ten or twelve pigs. It's the old sow that's lost her sex appeal and is reckless. . . . When an old sow has produced ten or twelve pigs, in two or three weeks one or two or three of them start to go back until finally when weaning time comes, they're curly pot-bellied runts. Why? Because these runts were compelled by their larger and huskier brothers and sisters to eat at the rear end of the lunch counter. That's the trouble with American agriculture. For twelve long years this great basic industry has been sucking the hind teat of this country of ours."

Thus in the midst of last week's House debate did Ohio's Representative Charles Truax epitomize the problem which President Roosevelt's catch-as-catch-can farm relief bill is experimentally designed to solve. For two days such earthy talk as Representative Truax's was bandied back & forth on the floor amid gales of laughter and applause, but without material effect on House thought. Relief for "runty" agriculture was foreordained from the moment of Mr. Roosevelt's election.

Texas' Marvin Jones, chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, refused to sponsor the Administration's measure because he objected to some of its price-raising machinery for wheat, cotton, tobacco, corn, rice, hogs, cattle, sheep, milk and milk products. "But," said he, "while this war is on, I'm going to follow the President. I don't think the bill can make things worse. God knows we all hope it will make them better."

Facts 6 Feathers. On the floor there was little detailed discussion of the provisions of the bill, which gave the Secretary of Agriculture absolute powers to try to raise farm prices to the 1909-14 level by means of idle acreage leases, speculative cotton options, subsidized crop reductions and price agreements. It also armed him with a processing tax which may cost John Consumer & family a billion dollars a year. Opponents harped on the fact that it would require thousands and thousands of Federal agents to administer the new law and that the Democrats were feathering their political nest by putting all such extra employes outside the civil service. The bill's friends retorted that this was done to permit the President to dismiss the lot without notice and end operations overnight if his farm experiment proved a failure. Many a member flayed the measure as the worst ever, but announced his support of it on the theory that the Senate would probably revamp it.

"Horrors 6 Hellishness." Hitting at Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Rexford Guy Tugwell, onetime Columbia University professor and Roosevelt "brain trust" member, Massachusetts' hulking Treadway roared: "The earmarks of an impractical college professor are plainly apparent in the language of the processing tax. I call upon him and his associates to explain. . . ."

Michigan's Hart: "President Roosevelt reminds me of the man who came down from Jericho and fell among thieves because he certainly fell in with a dishonest lot when he fell in with the farm leaders."

New York's Wadsworth, onetime Senator, in his maiden House speech: "I am staggered by the character of this proposal. I am amazed at its infinite ramifications. I shiver to think of the bureaucracy to be set up with its tentacles reaching into every back yard."

New York's Clarke: "Filled with horrors and hellishness as this bill is, I'm going to support the President."

Illinois' Dirksen: "Oh boy! I hope it works!"

315-to-98-When vote time came loud cries of "No! No!" filled the chamber at the suggestion of a roll call to put each & every member on record as for or against the President's farm plan. But a roll call was forced and the bill passed 315-10-98. To expiate its insurgency on the economy bill, Tammany Hall swung its full House strength to the President and higher food prices for New York City.

In the Senate, First important Senate opposition to the House Bill came from South Carolina's longtime Senator Smith, chairman of the Agriculture Committee who went ostentatiously to work on a substitute measure. Said he: "If turning over to the Secretary of Agriculture an overlordship over every farm and the power to tax every processor is the only hope. I despair of the future." Senator Smith favored keeping his own cotton option plan and cutting out crop reduction payments except direct land leasing by the Government. Likewise he would do away with the proposed Federal license system for processors and reduce their tax to a point where it would pay land rents and no more. Dissatisfied Senators soon had ready 100 assorted amendments limiting the Secretary of Agriculture's power. "Job-Crop Produce" At Chairman Smith's committee hearings the loudest critic of the Roosevelt plan was John Simpson, president of the National Farmers Union, who wanted nothing less than outright government price-fixing. Cried he:

"This bill sure is an experiment. You've started something when you attempt to regulate 30,000,000 men, women and children on the farm. It's impossible to control production by acreage. You've got to get God on your side before you can. The land-leasing action may result in a scandal that stinks to high heaven--a scandal that'll wreck the Democratic Party. For a job-crop producer this bill is a wonder."

Lost; $350,000,000. Into the general farm discussion was tossed a harsh statistic--$350,000,000. This was an estimate by Henry Morgenthau Jr., new Farm Board chairman, of how much of that agency's original $500,000,000 had been lost during the Hoover Administration in futile attempts to peg wheat and cotton prices. The Board's assets consisted of $38,000,000 in cash and about $112,000,000 in "good loans," the balance having disappeared in another historic "farm relief experiment."

Unyoking Mortgages. Of larger scope and hope than the price-upping bill were plans a-making at the White House last week to ease the farmers' mortgage yoke. President Roosevelt conferred long with Congressional leaders who prepared to couple a mortgage relief measure to the farm bill in the Senate. Pondered was the following proposal:

Let the Government issue through the Federal Land Banks one or two billion dollars worth of long-term 2 1/2% or 3% bonds. Let the Land Banks absorb the Joint Stock Land Banks for $500,000,000. Let holders of "frozen" farm mortgages turn them in to the Land Banks for good Federal bonds and the Land Banks issue new mortgages on farm property at an interest rate of not more than i% above that paid on the bonds. Or let the Land Banks lend farmers enough to pay up their back taxes and interest and make a new and better deal with their own mortgage holders. Such a scheme pivoted on the belief that mortgagees would gladly reduce principal and interest in return for either a cash settlement or a government-guaranteed security of less value.

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