POLITICAL NOTES: Feeling Their Oats

Having harvested an encouraging number of new Congressional seats (four), Senate places (two), and governors’ chairs (two) in the heart of Republicanism during and since the 1956 elections, Midwestern Democrats were clearly feeling their oats. At a regional conference in Kansas City, Kans. last week, they got right down to dirt-farmer politics with a simple proposition: every good red-blooded Midwesterner hates Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson.

The conference thereupon whooped through a farm resolution as politically potent as it was economically shameless. Its principal point: larger federal stockpiles of farmcommodities (present Government-held surpluses: $7.3 billion) should be permitted bylaw and “such carryover [should] be removed from consideration when establishing prices in the marketplace.” Its economic meaning: the farmer should get top subsidies even while commanding top market prices. Its political meaning: whatever the cost to the taxpayer, Midwestern Democrats plan to leave no political row unplowed in their work toward a bumper vote crop.*

*Also eying the U.S. farmer last week: the Census Bureau, which reported a farm population drop of 1,861,000 in a year. Part of this “substantial” loss represented farmers voluntarily leaving the land, part was caused by cities pushing out their boundaries to include farm land. New farm population total: 20,369,000.