Rigid Minds, Rigid Props

In the Midwest the snigger of the week was about the new "Benson tractor"--built without a seat, to accommodate farmers who have lost their pants. In Washington Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson had little time for worrying about such Farm Belt jeers: he had on his hands an urgent, deadly serious piece of business with members of the Senate Agriculture Committee.

One noon Benson stepped from his official Cadillac outside the Senate Office Building, tugged grimly on his broad-brimmed hat, and hurried to keep a luncheon date with three Republican Farm Belt Senators: Minnesota's Edward Thye, South Dakota's Karl Mundt and North Dakota's Milton Young. A few days earlier, in a preliminary Agriculture Committee vote, all three had sided with an eight-to-seven majority for restoring farm supports pegged rigidly at 90% of parity. This invitation to new surpluses was patently ridiculous, because the committee had also voted for the Administration's soil-bank program, designed to cut surpluses (and later upped the Administration's soil-bank request for $1.17 billion by $175 million). If Benson could persuade one of the G.O.P. three to switch, this year's farm bill could be sent to the Senate floor without the contradiction be tween high props and soil bank.

For 90 minutes, over a veal-and-rice casserole in Thye's office, Ezra Benson tried for a conversion. He failed.

That same day President Eisenhower wrote Vermont's Republican Senator George Aiken, strongly urging the committee to turn down rigid supports. "I should be gravely concerned." said the President, "if the soil bank should be coupled with the restitution of production incentives." Later, White House Press Secretary James Hagerty threw out pointed hints of a presidential veto of a farm bill containing a 90%-parity clause. These moves failed too. After a 14-hour, table-thumping session, the Agriculture Committee backed rigid supports, contradiction and all. The vote was still eight to seven; not a mind had been changed.

Last week the House:

P: Shouted through and shot to the Senate a $3.6 billion Post Office-Treasury Department appropriations bill, pleasantly aware, in an election year, that it was nearly two weeks earlier than any previous appropriations bill in modern history.

P: Unanimously passed and sent to the Senate a bill raising from $50 to $78 the monthly pay of predraft-age youths who sign up for the reserves under the six-month training program.

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