Trouble after the War

The high cost of keeping agricultural prices from going through the roof (which set taxpayers back a cool $700 to $800 million for subsidy payments to farmers last year) may be much higher in 1945. This fact came out last week when War Food Administrator Marvin Jones bravely marched up Capitol Hill to ask the Senate Banking and Currency Committee to: 1) extend the life of the Commodity Credit Corp., which expires June 30, for two more years; 2) expand CCC's borrowing power from $3 billion to $5 billion.

But tactful Mr. Jones, like many another borrower, sugar-coated his plea for more money. He bluntly recommended that subsidy payments for agricultural products be stopped after the war. Thus Jones served notice on the farmers that the time was fast approaching, as far as he was concerned, when they could no longer look to the taxpayer as a financial prop to support agricultural prices at artificially high prices. But what every Senator knew was that Administration policy can change. The outcries of the farmers, or a crush of postwar food surpluses, might make Administrator Jones's warning more of a nostalgic bow to free markets than a firm announcement of things to come.

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