Benson Baiters

Of all the storms that rage about the heads of Washington officials, none matches in intensity and duration the high, fine gale that whistles about Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson. Adding to the airy velocity last week was the voice of Nebraska's Republican Congressman A. L. Miller, who called on Benson to resign from the Eisenhower Cabinet for the good of the Republican Party. The demand was not surprising, for Benson has nearly as many hostile Republican as Democratic critics.

Principal reason is that Benson has a talent for making enemies and a genius for keeping them. Even though he is dispensing farm subsidies that total an astronomical $3.75 billion, Benson is disliked by most farmers because he preaches that subsidies are wrong. (Only 10% of those questioned in a recent farm poll rated Benson as doing an "excellent" job.) Even though he preaches that subsidies are wrong, city people dislike him because the subsidies grow larger, and he has not yet put across a workable program for cutting them down.

The G.O.P. high command is painfully aware that Benson has cost them farm state votes and will cost more in the congressional elections next year. But if the ranks of Benson's enemies are large and growing larger, he has, in his determination to stay on the job, one important friend: Dwight Eisenhower, who has sternly resisted tactful suggestions that he should listen to the political winds.

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