The Farmer's Friends

THE CONGRESS The Farmer's Friends

"I have had more cows' tails wrapped around my ears in fly time than any other Senator." boasted North Dakota's Milton Young. "I am sure that I have custom-threshed more hours than all the rest of the members put together, and no doubt spike-pitched more hours than any other Senator. I doubt if more than a dozen members of the Senate even know what spike-pitching means." Other Senators might indeed be less knowing than Wheat Farmer Young about custom-threshing and spike-pitching.-But they did know plenty about the wants and needs of U.S. farmers--the richest farmers in history, enjoying the richest years of their lives, and determined that other U.S. taxpayers should go on contributing handsomely to their prosperity. All week long the Senators wrangled hotly for the farmers' favor, reminding each other of the awful vengeance awaiting anyone who voted wrong.

Senators Will Hear ... As the debate began. ex-Secretary of Agriculture Clinton Anderson rolled out a bill based on the Democratic Party platform--a sliding scale of generous supports, ranging from 90% of parity down to 75%, depending on the size of U.S. harvests. But North Dakota's Republican Young and Georgia's Democrat Dick Russell were out to do better by the farmers. They proposed an amendment that would keep price supports on basic crops fixed at the flat 90% of parity which had been set up to increase production in time of war, and which the House had already voted to continue for another year. Said Georgia's Russell, ominously: "Senators will hear from their farmer constituents if this amendment shall be defeated."

Vermont's able, gentle George Aiken, who had helped write a sliding-scale program for the Republican 80th Congress, took up the defense of the Anderson bill. The whole idea, he said, was to get away from the increasing government controls which rigid supports would surely bring. Besides, by reducing the support level when farm production was high, farmers would not be tempted into overproducing at government expense. Said Aiken: "Let us not look for a check from the government as the first line of attack in the battle for farm prosperity. Let us work first of all for a decent price in the marketplace."

More & More. On the first vote, the Young-Russell amendment went down by the hairline margin of 38 to 37. But the fight had just begun. Just before dark, the Senate voted to reconsider its decision, and deadlocked at 37 to 37. At that point Vice President Alben Barkley spoke up. "The position of the chair," he said, "has been in favor of support at 90%. In every speech he made last year he declared the same position. He cannot now repudiate it, and therefore votes 'yea.' '

Majority Leader Scott Lucas was boiling mad at Barkley, whom he accused of "telling me what to do all evening." Barkley, equally irritated, rumbled: "I have not done any such thing." Vermont's Aiken cried: "The Senate has now out Brannaned the Brannan plan." He said that the 90% amendment would make the bill as expensive and control-ridden as Secretary of Agriculture Brannan's tricky scheme, which the Senate shies from.

"There are certain individuals," Lucas added, "who ... are never satisfied with a decent honorable support price. They want more & more . . . Public opinion will not stand up under the constant pressure of taking money from the U.S. Treasury."

Tidbits. Finally, dog-tired and snapping with irritation, the Senate switched its mind a third time, agreed to send the Anderson bill back to committee for rewriting. Shrewd Clint Anderson decided to spend pennies to save pounds. He added a little something here & there to his own bill to win over waverers: he promised 90% supports for pulled as well as shorn wool, and from 60-to-90% supports for honey and tung nuts.

Those last tidbits were enough to turn the trick. This week the Senate was all set to approve the Anderson bill with its sliding-scale system intact.

It had been a bizarre fight, in which the majority leader and Truman's former Secretary of Agriculture had been fighting mostly against Administration leaders. Lucas, Anderson and Aiken had shown political courage in fighting to give the farmer generous help, without turning over the keys of the U.S. Treasury to him.

Last week the Senate also:

P:Postponed the battle over civil rights until next session, at Majority Leader Lucas' insistence.

The House: P:Approved a sweeping extension of the social security system, making n million more workers eligible for old-age and survivors' benefits, and raising monthly payments an average of 70% (from an average base payment of $26 a month to $45).

*Custom-Thresher Young did the threshing for neighbors who had no machinery of their own; as a spike-pitcher he unloaded shocked grain from wagon-beds into the thresher, in the days before combine harvesters.

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