INTERNATIONAL: Wheat Back-Slappers

Pink-cheeked from cruising in and out of Norwegian fjords, Robert Worth Bingham, President Roosevelt’s wispish Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, was able to take the gavel with the consent of his doctors when the International Wheat Conference convened last week in London.

Out of the wreck of the World Economic Conference last year the International Wheat Conference salvaged and signed an export quota agreement which acts of the Almighty have greatly assisted its signatories to keep (TIME, Sept. 11). Of the Big Four signatories—U.S., Argentina, Canada and Australia—only Argentina has wholly escaped the searing blight of drought, and last week only Argentina had broken her agreement, exporting 34,000,000 more bushels of wheat than the 110,000,000 she accepted as her limit. Even so drought has struck savagely enough to keep the Big Four from exceeding their combined quota of 462,000,000 bushels.

“This is a solid achievement to the credit of the international wheat agreement!” cried genial John I. McFarland, manager of the Canadian Wheat Pool. Other delegates saw no reason to contradict him. The nation which, on a percentage basis, had most flagrantly broken its pledge happened to be the Conference’s host last week, hence could not in decency be flayed. Solemnly His Majesty’s Government gave its word last year “not to encourage any extension of the area sown,” then went blithely ahead paying subsidies to wheat growers in Great Britain with the result that the Kingdom’s acreage shot up by 6%. For this His Majesty’s Government offered last week no apology or explanation.

The Conference was sure last year that if acts of God or man greatly reduced world wheat production—as they indeed have—the price of wheat in terms of gold would rise. Instead last week world wheat was at 55.6 gold cents per bushel, or almost exactly where it was a year ago. Only where farmers have been bamboozled by making money worth less does wheat seem to them to be worth more. Still inoperative are clauses in last year’s wheat agreement which were to reduce tariffs should the price climb even to a measly 63 gold cents.

When the Conference got down to discussing 1935 last week, delegates dropped their back-slapping and began to hedge. On orders from Washington, soft-spoken U. S. Agricultural Attache Lloyd Steers of the Berlin Embassy voiced a friendly ultimatum: The U. S. cannot be expected to enter agreements for next year unless guarantees are given that pledges will be kept by all, not merely by the blighted. In Washington Mordecai Ezekiel, Secretary of Agriculture Wallace’s lean-jawed economic adviser, declared: “We are going to have virtually no wheat to sell abroad next year.”