Barnes v. Legge?

A prime G. O. Policy: no government competition against private business. Last week's rumor: private grain commission men in Chicago and Minneapolis were fighting for their economic lives against the Farmers' National Grain Corp. created and largely financed by the Federal Farm Board as a direct cooperative sales agency for grain growers. Last week's development: the Senate Lobby Committee summoned Julius Howland Barnes to tell what, if anything, he knew of a secret widespread movement among private grain commission men to "restrain the Federal Farm Board," to undermine its attempts to establish a quasi-official enterprise competitive with private business.

Mr. Barnes is many things:

1) A power in the grain commission and export business (he headed the U. S. Food Administration Grain Corp. during the War);

2) a close personal friend of President Hoover

3) chief of President Hoover's National Business Committee of 72 to restore industrial equilibrium (TIME, Dec. 16):

4) Chairman of the Board of Directors of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce which last week issued an oblique attack upon the Federal Farm Board.

In effect supporting the private grain commission men, the chamber's agricultural committee declared: "The Chamber advocates cooperative marketing . . . only in so far as they are not discriminatory against other private enterprise. ... It is of vital importance to the preservation of private capital investments in storage and other physical marketing facilities that the duplication of such facilities by use of federal loans be not allowed

." In the Senate, northwestern Senators swung to the support of the Federal Farm Board, flayed the private commission men as "gamblers." A rush of denials of trouble flowed from Farm Board Chairman Alexander Legge, Mr. Barnes, Chicago and Minneapolis grain men. From the White House came a broad hint that President Hoover would support his farm board chairman sooner than his business committee chairman in this controversy.

Biggest Cooperative. Last week at Memphis the Federal Farm Board laid foundations for the world's largest farm cooperative--a $30,000,000 cotton sales organization built around the American Cotton Growers Exchange. Into the national agency will be merged the cotton cooperatives of 15 states. Critic Lowden. To a meeting of the American Farm Bureau Federation last week Frank Orren Lowden, onetime Governor of Illinois and "farmers' friend," addressed these words: "If there has been any substantial change for the better in the general farm situation since last year, it has escaped my notice. ... It is unfortunate for this impression to go abroad. . . . The [federal] machinery created to help the farmer hasn't done much for him yet."

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