Henry's Egg

Of all the 1940 Presidential boomlets, that of patient Secretary of Agriculture Henry Agard Wallace has probably laid the biggest egg. Weary Mr. Wallace, toiling like Tantalus in Hades, has pushed the farm problem up the hill countless times, only to have it roll back and crush him anew each & every time. Trapped in a six-year mesh of cumbrous grabbag legislation, alternately burned by droughts* and swamped by bounteous Nature's overproduction, still he comes up with a dogged smile, pushes his greying cowlick out of his eyes, and tackles the irresistible forces with new enthusiasm. But still U. S. farmers rate him low on all popularity polls.

This week he pushed his sorest worry, cotton, in a new direction. In the 1936 Soil Conservation Act, Secretary Wallace was empowered to use his funds to expand foreign markets and remove domestic surpluses of commodities or commodity products. Under this authority, and that latent in the 1939 Farm Appropriation Bill, he may spend $50,000,000 in subsidizing export cotton and cotton products. This was the first time that the "products" phrase of the authority had been used, and it was a politically agile move, since nobody has damned the New Deal, particularly its Wage & Hour Bill, harder than Southern textile men. He now announced that, beginning July 27, every person who exports U. S. cotton will be paid a subsidy of 1.5-c- per lb., and every exporter of cotton goods will get from 1-c- to 2.1-c- according to classification.

This vast experiment, directly contrary to Secretary of State Hull's reciprocal trade agreements, directly resulted from cotton's tragic predicament: 1) cotton exports for the season ending July 31 were 3,400,000 bales, smallest in 60 years; 2) Mr. Wallace is still holding the bag on 11,300,000 bales of cotton, the accumulated surplus; 3) in three weeks cotton-pickers will begin plucking 1939 bolls for a new unwanted, unsalable crop expected to total about 12,000,000 more bales.

As he brooded sombrely on this one farm problem alone last week, Henry Wallace must have forgotten all about 1940.

*For eleven centuries, the superstitious have believed that if rain fell on St. Swithin's Day (July 15), rain would thereafter fall for 40 days; and vice versa. This year's dry St. Swithin's Day was followed by an Eastern drought, with crops burning in four States.

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