Farm (& City) Policy

When she was appointed to the U.S. Senate two months ago to succeed the late Dwight Griswold (TIME, April 26), Nebraska Rancher Eva Bowring adopted a rancher's formula: "I'm going to ride the fence awhile until I find where the gates are." Last week Senator Bowring found a gate and rode through at full gallop.

Saddled Markets. A few hours after the Senate Agriculture Committee voted 8-7 to continue high, rigid support of basic farm-crop prices (the House Agriculture Committee had already voted 21-8 for the same policy), Republican Bowring rose on the Senate floor to make her maiden speech. She knew that freshman Senators are supposed to be quiet, she said, but "I feel that the hour is crucial, and that the circumstances demand that I make my position known." Her position: the congressional committee majorities were dead wrong; the flexible price-support plan backed by Secretary of Agriculture Benson and President Eisenhower "will best serve the future of the nation and its agriculture."

Said Rancher Bowring: "In the long run, rigid price supports take from the farmer more than he receives. They encourage him to deplete his soil. They saddle the markets with surpluses which give him no opportunity to realize full parity. They destroy the normal relationship of feed and livestock prices. They encourage the development of competitive synthetics . . . They place farmers in such a position that they lose much of their freedom to make management decisions."

When the new Senator had finished, eight of her colleagues rose to compliment her. Among them was one of the oldest hands in the Senate, North Dakota's cantankerous Bill Langer, who thought she had done a fine job of presenting her case, but hoped "that before adjournment she will have completely changed her mind." Mrs. Bowring stood her ground: "In connection with [that] hope . . . the junior Senator from Nebraska may perhaps be as inflexible as the senior Senator from North Dakota."

Split Bloc. The exchange between the cattle country's Bowring and the wheat country's Langer illustrated a fact that members of Congress well know: the price-support argument is not a "farm bloc" issue. Farm-state Senators and Representatives are split, with those from grain, dairy and cotton areas generally plumping for high, rigid supports and those from livestock and diversified sections favoring flexibility. In view of the split, the Eisenhower Administration this week was fighting for the votes of Northern, big-city Democrats, who will hold the balance of power when the roll calls come. Vice President Nixon, Secretary Benson and his Under Secretary, True D. Morse, were ready with speeches that emphasized a point of particular interest to big-city Congressmen: high, rigid price supports mean high, rigid food costs.

In the House and Senate Agriculture Committee actions, the Eisenhower Administration clearly lost the first round of the farm-program fight. The second round, on the floor of both houses, is likely to be close. If the Administration loses that one, President Eisenhower will still have a Sunday punch. The prevailing opinion on Capitol Hill last week was that the President would veto a rigid-price-support bill. If Congress did not override the veto, previously enacted flexible price supports (from 75% of parity when crops are plentiful to 90% when they are not) would go into effect Jan. 1.

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