Selling Wheat

The Administration's plans to help the wheat farmers proceeded on two fronts. Eugene Meyer, Jr., and former Congressman Frank W. Mondell, Director of the War Finance Corporation, set out for the Northwest to assist the farmers in forming cooperative marketing associations. Former Governor Frank O. Lowden of Illinois was elected chairman of a committee to aid them in this effort.

Meanwhile it is understood that in Washington Secretary of Agriculture Wallace has evolved another plan. It would call for the creation of a large grain export corporation by the Government to purchase grain with Government money and sell it abroad by cutting prices and taking losses if necessary. On the following year this deficit would be made up by an excise tax on grain at the elevators. The theory is that if this year's surplus is entirely disposed of, next year's production can stand the burden of the tax divided over the entire crop.

This plan was reliably reported, but does not seem typical of Secretary Wallace. It has the very drawbacks which he has objected to in other plans, that it would tend to increase wheat production, whereas restriction of acreage is what is needed.