"Millions of Bullfrogs"

No football crowd in the land could have been cheerier than the throng of farmers, bundled in sheepskins and mackinaws, who converged one morning last week in 15,000 automobiles on Farmer Ben Stalp's place near West Point, Neb. to see the National Cornhusking Championship. They cheered and stomped lustily as, with pheasants whirring up out of the sere corn rows and the yellow ears whacking against the bangboards, Husker Sherman Henriksen of Lancaster County, Nebraska, beat 16 competitors, including the champions of Illinois, Indiana and Minnesota, with a net load of 27.62 bushels in the allotted 30 minutes.

A grim, menacing contrast was another, smaller crowd of farmers 25 mi. away at Thurston, Neb. Pickets of the Farm Holiday Association, they burned a railroad bridge on the line into Sioux City. Other picketers burned a bridge over near Portsmouth, Iowa. Elsewhere in Iowa and in Wisconsin and Minnesota there was violence last week. But it was fitful, sporadic violence. Milo Reno's great Corn Belt uprising was not rising "in full gear" as he had urged. Checks from the Agriculture Adjustment Administration were descending on the land in a gentle, pervasive rain, damping the prairie fire of farmers' anger. Hers and there law-abiding, patient farmers organized vigilance corps to deal with agitators.*The Corn Belt was quiet as into it came General Hugh Samuel Johnson to speak for the President.

78 Seats. Not just to praise his NRA but also to explain his colleague George Peek's collateral AAA and to hold the farm vote for next autumn's Congressional elections, came General Johnson. Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska and South Dakota control 107 seats in the House of Representatives, 78 of which are now Democratic. Loss of many of these seats to the Republicans might deeply cut the Democratic house majority of 183, seriously hamper President Roosevelt's program.

Minneapolis. Fifteen thousand people swarmed into the Minneapolis Auditorium to hear General Johnson warm up by denouncing "chiselers" and "old guard lookout men." "These are rugged individualists who want to continue to live in the dark ages of human relationships. . . . I'm not going to let them fool the American people. . . . Racketeering is a harsh word. We do not mind it when applied to Al Capone, but these gentlemen do not like to hear it applied to what a Senate committee has disclosed about certain great New York fiduciaries. Why. the truth is, in the light of these developments, that Al Capone was a poor ignorant Sicilian piker.

"NRA has nothing to do with farm credits, or home loan or farm loan or public works. . . . The AAA had to deal not with industry which operates all year, but with agriculture which operates on seasonal crops. It did not have authority in time to do all it intends for this year's crops. . . . Farm revolt may be useful, but it is no part of wisdom to revolt against our friends. . . . What did you ever get from these gentlemen who are now inciting you against the President's program? I'll tell you what you got. . . . You got destitution and the road to ruin. . . . If instead of making the President's task harder by misunderstanding, you continue to give him your patience and your support, he will lick this ghastly farm disparity."

Des Moines. Next day General Johnson sped to Des Moines, addressed 4,000 at the Shrine Auditorium. "To agriculture the Recovery Administration gave everything," he declared. "There is authority to do everything that ever has been suggested to raise farm prices and if none of the indirect methods work, there is authority to tax the whole public and turn the proceeds over to agriculture to make up for any lag in parity of prices."

By nightfall he was in Omaha, furiously exorcising Old Deal industrialists. "In seven months," he said. President Roosevelt had "patched up almost 25% of the wreck of twelve years' blundering."

In Kansas City, General Johnson said he had telephoned President Roosevelt that not 1% of the people had any idea of opposing his program. In Convention Hall he declared: "There was so much tom-tom writing in the papers out here that I thought it well to make a swing around the circle. It was altogether unnecessary." He told the story of the New York chef who hastened out to the Midwest because "some big butter-&-egg man of those days" informed him there were "millions of bullfrogs" on his ranch. "He knew that because he heard them filling the night with their ke-dunking. Well, you know the rest. Like the lone coyote--like William Allen White--like several other of our institutions in this great Mississippi basin--he found that there were exactly three bullfrogs who were making all that noise."

To newspaper reporters he said: "I would never have left Washington if I'd known that things were in as good shape as they are. I expected to be heckled at Des Moines and Omaha, and I was cheered!"

Wallace. To Des Moines last week also went Secretary of Agriculture Wallace. To the cornhusking bee in Nebraska he broadcast a description of the first U. S. bee, which he sponsored in 1923 to make cornhusking an art instead of drudgery. Des Moines is Secretary Wallace's home town. Before becoming a Cabinet official he edited Wallace's Farmer there, Iowans turned out 10,000 strong to hear their native son speak in the Coliseum. He declared that the Government's corn-hog loan program would increase farm income, that farm prices would be inflated by the President's new gold policy and by the upping of industrial wages under the NRA. But he conceded that such inflation might be slow. "This is especially true of dairy and livestock products." he said. "It may be necessary to increase quickly and materially the purchasing power of the people who consume those products. In other words, industrial payrolls must be increased. . . .

"Where will the money come from? If private capital declines to provide it, the Government will have to. This can be done under existing law, and on Wednesday last the President announced that the Government is prepared to move in that direction by taking 4,000,000 off the public relief rolls and giving them jobs [see p. 11]. This is the kind of controlled inflation that takes hold at the grass roots."

* TIME erred in stating fortnight ago that, "in Iowa 20,000 deputies and 50,000 militia stood to arms to keep the peace." Iowa's militia totals 3,751, and was not ordered out. By request of local sheriffs, some militiamen were allowed to swear in as special deputies. There were approximately 1,000 deputies throughout the State, of which not more than 200 actively participated in quelling the strike. Milo Reno, prime agitator of the farm holiday movement, characterized as "preposterous" his colleagues' claim that 250,000 pickets were posted throughout the Corn Belt. He put total picket strength at 10,000.

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