Beaten Bloc

No casual visitor in the House gallery could have guessed that a critical moment of the 77th Congress was at hand. Speaker Rayburn merely drawled: "The question is on agreeing to the motion of the gentleman from Missouri." There was no debate. As casually as if it were considering a new post office, the House voted 205-128 not to agree with the gentleman.

But in that moment the potent, stubborn, self-seeking farm bloc was beaten. The vise which it had clamped on Congress, the Administration and the nation (TIME, July 20) was cracked. The vote permitted the Agriculture Department to sell 125 million bushels of Government-owned surplus wheat for fodder (to produce badly needed meat and eggs) at its own price (83-c- a bushel)--not the inflationary price that the farm bloc wanted. It released the $680,000,000 appropriation which the Department needs for its mammoth wartime food program. For every citizen concerned about feeding the United Nations and avoiding inflation, this was welcome news.

What beat the farm bloc this time was a combination of public opinion, strong pressure from President Roosevelt, and squabbles inside the bloc itself. But the victory was by no means final. The farm bloc would not stay beaten long: it would be back again soon, whooping as loud as ever for higher prices.

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