National Affairs: The Readjustment

With a cheery smile and a pat on the back for everyone, Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson returned from a 16-day tour of Europe last week to defend his conduct of office. He was the storm center of a mounting uproar from the farmlands that worried the Republicans and encouraged the Democrats to predict a “green uprising” in their favor in next year’s elections. Minnesota’s Democratic Governor Orville Freeman struck his party’s keynote when he said that the Eisenhower Administration considered farming to be a stepchild of little importance in an otherwise prosperous economy.

At a press conference, Benson said: “I assure you, I have not been amused by some of the old efforts that are being made to make a political football out of the farm situation. I feel very firmly that agriculture is basically sound today, in spite of the prophets of gloom.”

Benson admitted that U.S. farmers were caught in a cost-price squeeze: “It is real. But it is not new. The farmers know there is no easy way out.”

Banking the Soil. In the fall of 1955, U.S. farmers were going through a belated readjustment from the sky-high prosperity of World War II and Korea. Since 1947, the national farm income has declined 30%. The prices received by the farmers for their products have fallen 21% since Korea, while the cost of what they buy has declined less than 3%.

Last week hundreds of farmers thronged into Iowa barns to protest against the readjustment, and to demand the resignation of Secretary Benson. Confident that his course had been the right one, Benson intended to reduce price supports by 3% to 13% on five basic crops next year (wheat supports will come down from 82.5% of parity to 76%) and to cut back the acreage of wheat and cotton.

Benson was, however, considering several new plans to ease the readjustment. One plan was a “lease-land” program, whereby the Government would pay farmers about $500 million a year rental to take about 40 million surplus acres out of production to “conserve fertility.” Benson promised that there would be “no radical measures, like plowing under cotton and the slaughter of little pigs.”

Charging the Taxpayer. Meanwhile, the Democrats made what hay they could out of discontent on the farm. Democratic National Chairman Paul Butler last week proposed 90% parity for basic crops on family-size farms, plus the extension of supports to hogs, eggs, poultry, beef cattle, whole milk and butterfat. Democrats generally favor the Brannan Plan, under which the farmers would sell their goods in the marketplace for what they could get, and the Government would make up the difference to a predetermined “fair return.” Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, still recovering from a heart attack, announced that new farm price-supports would be a first order of business for Congress when it reconvenes; Johnson was serving notice that the Democrats have at last found the issue that, they believe, will get them back into power.

On this political level, Vice President Richard Nixon last week replied to the Democrats, posing the alternatives to city voters as well as to the farmers: “We do not believe that American farmers are getting their fair share of America’s unprecedented prosperity. We shall continue to explore every possible program which will remedy the inequity . . .” Later he added: “The showdown battle in 1956 will be between those who want to nationalize and socialize basic American institutions and those who prefer the Eisenhower Republican program.”