"100 Percent Failure"

In front of the White House one afternoon last week, five worried Governors unloaded themselves from automobiles and posed for newscameras with Secretary Wallace of Agriculture and Director George Peek of AAA. Then Floyd Bjerstjerne Olson of Minnesota, the group's spokesman, with a sporty blue shirt, blue tie, grey suit and slicked-back hair, led them in to see the President. His jaunty step belied the deep concern he felt. South Dakota's Tom Berry, a broad-brimmed plush hat of sandy hue above his leathery face, took the steps in a rolling cowboy gait. The one who looked like a church deacon, Clyde Herring of Iowa, marched along sedately. Wrinkled Albert George Schmedeman, who had been debating with himself all day whether or not to proclaim martial law in Wisconsin, looked troubled and tiny beside moose-tall William Langer of North Dakota, who chews cigars with the cellophane wrapper peeled halfway down and whose wheat embargo was one of the starkest symptoms of the matter they had all come to discuss. Accompanied by big, rawboned George Peek and cadaverous Secretary Wallace, their briefcases bulging with statistics, they were shown up the broad stairs to the Oval Room where President Roosevelt awaited them. . . .

Three days before, in the rococo legislative chamber of Iowa's capitol at Des Moines, all five Governors and representatives of four others had chewed stogies while tousle-headed Milo Reno, the rampaging Des Moines insurance man who fomented the Farmers Holiday movement, read off the list of his demands for agriculture. Hating Secretary Wallace and the AAA as a farmer hates a drought, Reno had asked for a farm code which would remove agriculture from Wallace's supervision, put it entirely under the NRA. Each farmer would be licensed to sell only his proportion of the domestic consumption of his product. The Government would decree minimum Chicago prices at Mr. Reno's much mooted "cost- of-production level," not at AAA's 1909-14 parity levels. In addition, the President was asked: to declare a moratorium on mortgage foreclosures, to refund the 4th Liberty Loan in new currency, to remonetize silver.

The Governors had no better plan. They lopped off Reno's last three proposals, got him to declare a truce in the farm strike. Then Governors Olson and Schmedeman entrained for Washington. Their colleagues later flew in the same direction.

While the Governors were in Washington, the Farm Holiday movement plowed to a standstill but not without loud backfirings. Wham! a cheese factory went up at Belgium, Wis. Wham! Wham! two more were dynamited at Krakow and Zachow. Repudiating their Holiday leader, Wisconsin farmers, bundled against the biting winter winds, held up city-bound milk and food trucks, braved ax handles, tear gas and blackjacks, stormed the Sunshine dairy at Waterford three times in a day, destroying 34,000 Ib. of milk by dumping it on the ground, pouring gasoline in the vats. Thirty-five picketers at Wausau were arrested, thrown in jail, after they demolished a truck.

Even as the Governors talked to the President, a secretary came in with a message for Wisconsin's Schmedeman from the chairman of his Executive Council. "They are blowing up cheese plants and milk plants," read this frantic dispatch, "and are getting ugly. I question whether we could stop it even if we call out the militia." From Minnesota's Representative Francis Henry Shoemaker, onetime convict, came word that farmers were forming military units under War veterans.

The White House conference lasted four hours. It became clear to the Governors that Secretary Wallace was unconvinced as to the price-pegging program's practicability, but when they left for their hotel an optimistic White House bulletin announced: "A tentative plan was worked out. Further conferences will be held tomorrow morning."

No conference with the President was held next morning by the Governors. Secretary Wallace got the President's ear first. The Governors were shunted over to the Secretary's office to wait for him. The tone of the negotiations had already changed when Secretary Wallace, emerging from the White House, observed: "We find that it is not quite so simple to work out the details of the plan as we first thought it would be." Disgusted at this turn of events, when the others moved out of Wallace's office to carry on in another conference room, big Governor Langer, his cellophaned cigar now a tattered stump, vowed he would waste no more time with the President's underlings. Iowa's Herring managed to pacify him.

As this conference progressed, the Governors soft-pedaled the Reno code scheme, but still stuck to the price-pegging program. From original levels of $1.39 wheat, 94-c- corn, $11.32 hogs, they receded some 20%. There the conference deadlocked. When reporters were admitted, they found Governor Olson's smooth hair a disheveled mop. Someone asked him what would happen in the rebellious agricultural areas if the negotiations collapsed. He bent his head disconsolately, tapped the table with a pencil. "God," he said quietly, 'I don't know." George Peek was still hopeful, however. He was willing to try anything "that won't blow up in our laps."

Next morning five grave Governors, even more concerned than they had been two days before, again entered the White House. The President dashed what hope they had left when he read them the message he was about to release to the Press:

"The Governors wished the Federal Government immediately to license all handlers and processors of agricultural products to pay fair exchange value, a price which on the average is 70% above that now prevailing. To enforce the immediate adoption of such a price, in view of the inability of city consumers to take present quantities of farm products at such a price, the Governors advocated compulsory control of marketing. . . . The Governors declared their ability . . . to put over a program which amounts substantially to the licensing of every plowed field and marketing by a ticket punch system of all grain and livestock."

The Corn Belt, the President felt, might be willing to accept "complete regimentation," but the plan had slim chances of success in such states as Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York where there are large urban populations. Moreover, "the highly individualistic" Eastern and Southern farmers might balk. In that case, the Corn Belt "might be left holding the bag while other States expanded production."

"The President and the Department of Agriculture believe that the Governors can most promptly increase the money in the hands of their farmers with the maximum of longtime benefit by cooperating to the limit with the plans which have already been set in motion," concluded President Roosevelt.

Governor Langer stomped out of the White House for the last time. "Our mission was 100% failure," he declared shortly. "He [the President] rejected the plan entirely and offered nothing in its place. I am very disappointed and disgusted. The farmer is the Forgotten Man. Everybody else has been here before him. The banker, the insurance man, the railroad man have got all the money. There is nothing left for the farmer."

In the Corn Belt, the bars were down again. Milo Reno went into action at a meeting of 2,000 Missouri farmers. "Never again will we call this strike off until our demands are met!" he blazed. He ordered the strike "into full gear." "No great reform was ever effected without an uprising of the masses!" Within 24 hours the Holiday leaders claimed they had 250,000 picketers posted. Near Sioux City a railway bridge was burned, a train fired on, stock cars plundered. In Iowa, 20,000 deputies and 50,000 militia stood to arms to keep the peace.

President Roosevelt bided his time, hopeful that he could smother this new fire of farm revolt under a rain of checks for wheat and corn-hog adjustments.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.