Closed Minds

Speaker Sam Rayburn, who rarely speaks out any more, stood solemnly before the House, shaking his bald dome and searching for the right words. "I fear," he said, "I am speaking to minds that are closed." It is only reasonable, he pleaded, to give a far-reaching legislative idea a fair trial. Though popular Sam Rayburn has immense prestige, the Congressmen listened coldly. Seeing them unmoved, Sam made a brazen appeal to the patronage instinct: "Let me say to you, my Democratic friends, that I found out a long time ago that in this House the people get along the best who go along the most." He switched to ominous prophecy: "Some of these days, unless we pay a little more attention to the consumers of this country, they may rise up and make it hard for us to continue a farm program ..."

But nothing the Speaker could do or say was going to save Harry Truman from another defeat. The rebellious House was out to kill the Administration's spectacular Brannan farm plan (TIME, April 18). And to make the chase more annoying, some of Sam Rayburn's most stalwart followers were leading the posse.

They had heard all about the Brannan plan, and what they had heard made them uneasy. At first blush, the plan sounded fine. Market prices on perishables would be allowed to drop to their natural level, thereby pleasing the consumers. The Government would pay the difference to the farmer, giving him higher subsidies than he now got, thereby tickling the farmer too. And yet all this probably wouldn't cost the taxpayer any more than the present farm program because the Department of Agriculture would so skillfully estimate crop needs and so carefully rig subsidy prices that the nation's 4,801,000 farmers, bribed or bridled into obeying, would grow only the amount" needed (that is, if nature was also cooperative).

In the face of congressional opposition, Brannan was now willing to whittle his plan down to a three-product trial run (eggs, potatoes, shorn wool) and come back for the rest in two years. But even that was too much for the House. "I am afraid of the plan," shouted Fair Dealer Mike Monroney of Oklahoma. "If we can accomplish this trick of high producers' prices and low consumers' prices without the outpouring of billions of dollars from the U.S. Treasury, then we have discovered something as great as . . . perpetual motion."

Tired Sam Rayburn gave up and waited for a vote. The House buried Charley Brannan's trial-run plan, 222 to 152. Then, with 79 Democrats deserting the Administration, it voted to continue the existing farm parity program for another year.

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