Revolution, Not Revolt

(See Cover)

On the land where the U.S. grows its food and fiber, the majestic checkerboard of spring was beginning to form. The plains and rolling hills of Illinois and Iowa, where farmers were turning the soil for this year's crop of corn, were a geometric pattern of black and brown and green. On to the West and South, through Kansas and into Texas, the spreading, endless fields of wheat were coming green and beginning to ripple softly in the wind. In the Deep South, across the bottom of Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia, green shoots were peeking out of the ridges in the cotton fields.

It seemed like any other spring, but in Washington there was angry and fearful talk about a revolt on the farm. Grasping for an issue to use in the November elections, Democratic leaders were playing the farm issue at campaign pitch, and some farm state congressional Republicans were almost as keyed up. The Democrats kept studying the charts of the 1948 elections, in which Harry Truman carried four Republican farm states (Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa) plus border Missouri. They figured that if--just if--they could catch all five, hold the South plus all that Stevenson won in 1952, they could squeak in to victory next November.

All week long congressional Democrats marched up and down the hill trying to find a way to outmaneuver the President so they might emerge as the true champions of the farmer. Answering Eisenhower's radio-television speech on the farm-bill veto (TIME, April 23), Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson held out the simple lure of more money for farmers. Republicans, he said, worry about the economic problem and the percentage points and dollar symbols, but the Democrats worry about people.

Forces of Change. Before it fanned out across the country, most of the political furor swirled around one man: Ezra Taft Benson, Secretary of Agriculture. He took it calmly. Seated firmly behind his Washington desk, listening to politicians warn him that his policies are going to lose the election, Secretary Benson glanced often at a motto, in small type, pasted to the marble base of his pen and pencil set, where only he could see it. "Oh Lord," it says, "give us men with a mandate higher than the ballot box."

Ezra Benson needed to be calm and prayerful, for he is presiding over the agricultural economy of the U.S. at a time of revolution, not revolt. Caught up in the forces of change, most U.S. farmers are worried, many are angry, a few are giving up. The revolution that besets them started slowly more than a generation ago, when U.S. farming began to change from a family way of life to a specialized indu try. Through the years new machines-- tractors, trucks, combines, multiple plows, multi-row cultivators, a whole catalogue of farm equipment--made it possible for a man to farm more acres of land, to raise more and better livestock (see BUSINESS). That meant the need for fewer people on the farm. It meant (and continues to mean) fewer small, "family" farms, and bigger expertly-managed farms.

At the same time, better seed, fertilizers, chemicals, processes and breeding made an acre of land more productive. That meant much more production for far less work. In 1910-14, the production of 100 bushels of corn required 135 man-hours of work. By 1950-53 it took just 34. Total farm output in 1955 was 48% above the pre-World War II years, and labor used to produce this output was down about 30%. In 1935-39 an American farm worker produced enough to feed ten other people; last year his output would feed 19.

A Painful Squeeze. In the midst of this revolution in productivity the U.S. farm economy has been hit hard from the other side. The seemingly insatiable world appetite created by war and famine fell off as peace and production were restored. Consequently, U.S. farm prices went down and surpluses went up. From a peak in February 1951, during the Korean war,* farm prices slid 28% by last December. In the same period, prices of what the farmer had to buy went down only 3%. The parity index, which rates the price the farmer gets for his products against the price (100) of what he buys, hit a peak of 113 in February 1951, slid to a low of 80 at the end of 1955.

Compared to what farmers and non-farmers were making in 1940, the per-capita income of farmers now is still relatively higher than that of non-farm people. Farmers' per-capita income is 228% above 1940, while non-farmers' income is up 181%. The trouble on the farms is that income shot up to a heady 273% above 1940 in wartime, and then slid painfully downward while the rest of the economy continued to rise. As a result farmers are caught in a painful cost-price squeeze.

Job for an Archangel. "I doubt if an archangel with my first name could have been popular as Secretary of Agriculture in years like these," says Gabriel Hauge, White House economic adviser. No arch angel, but an apostle of the Mormon Church, Ezra Taft Benson is the first clergyman in a century to serve in the U.S. cabinet.* An earnest, praying man, he works night and day at a pace that would kill weaker men. He is up at 5 or 5:30 a.m. to meditate, pray and work in his small basement study, austerely fitted with an iron cot, a plain wooden chair and desk. When he arrives at the office shortly before 8, he has already done about two hours of work. Since 1953 he has traveled 284,000 miles on the job (only 25,000 less than globe-hopping John Foster Dulles) to campaign for his principles and to try to sell the Administration program to the farmer. And he has placed only one limitation on his tireless performance: he will not work on Sunday except to rescue the Biblical "fallen ox," i.e., to handle a crisis.

Apostle Benson's firm beliefs are the key to the way he has handled his job in the Cabinet. As a devout Mormon, he believes firmly in self-reliance, economic independence, avoidance of debt and of Government bounty. He accepts the Mormon beliefs that God favored the U.S. over all other lands and that the U.S. Constitution is a divinely inspired document. Serving in the Cabinet is more than an important Government post for Benson ; it is also a mission of faith.

A Card for Drew. Thus fortified, Benson endures violent criticism with the demeanor of a Boy Scout leader (which he is) in a den of noisy cubs. He also turns the other cheek: last Christmas, he took pains to send a card to one of his most vitriolic critics, Columnist Drew Pearson, whom he studiously skips in reading the newspaper.

In line with the Mormon concept that the family should share the father's business, the Bensons have made the U.S. farm problem their problem. As the result of long discussions at home, the Secretary's wife once got him to publicize milk-dispensing machines to help relieve the dairy-product surplus. Flora Benson attends many of his press conferences, and occasionally finds time from her duties at home (she has no maid, does her own housework) to make a speech. In Toledo last week for a speech at a Republican women's meeting, she said: "I've enjoyed working on a farm with my husband. I've cooked for threshers and we've gone through what the farmers are going through today." Asked to define her role in shaping the destiny of the American farmer, she answered without hesitation: "To be a true and loyal companion to my husband, be interested in his work, do away with surpluses and get the soil bank passed."

Lesson in Zigzag. Like many another member of the Eisenhower Cabinet, Benson went into his job with his firm convictions, and then discovered that Washington had something to teach him about the kind of give-and-take that makes government function. In his first major policy statement in 1953, he said that "price supports should provide insurance against disaster" and that "inefficiency should not be subsidized in agriculture." Today, without being so doctrinaire, he says: "I have been confident all the way along that what we are doing is best for farmers. I have no interest other than that."

Essentially both statements mean the same thing--i.e., that he wants to wipe out the rigid, 90%-of-parity price supports adopted in wartime, because he is convinced that they only build up the surplus and will not really sustain prices. He favors a flexible price-support system ranging down to 75% of parity for crops in surplus and up to 90% for crops in demand, because he feels this will discourage production of surpluses and give the law of supply and demand a chance to operate to the farmers' eventual benefit.

In 1954, after Benson abruptly cut dairy support prices by 15 parity points, the President called his Secretary of Agriculture to the White House and asked whether the action might not have been too abrupt. Then Old Soldier Eisenhower drew some lines on a piece of scratchpaper to show Old Farmer Benson that, in military action, there are two ways to reach an objective--the direct way, and by a zigzag approach. Advised Ike: try to understand the merits of the zigzag too.

"Rising Above Principle." Benson has since done some zigzagging. In 1954, he issued orders that a farmer would have to comply with all acreage allotment rules and marketing quotas to get price supports on any of his crops, e.g., a wheat farmer who cut his acreage to get into the wheat support program could not turn around and plant an unsupported crop on the land and thus contribute to another surplus. Under pressure, Benson later canceled this "cross-compliance" order which, though difficult to administer, would have put sharp teeth in acreage control.

He also zigged on the soil bank. Last fall he was opposed to it and called it a "land rental scheme"; this year, faced with declining prices and even bigger surpluses, he changed his mind, agreed that it should be the heart of the Administration's 1956 farm program. Despite his opposition to high, rigid price supports, he has been willing to promise a firm 82.5% of parity on most basic crops in an effort to prevent Congress from passing a rigid 90% bill. Having learned the politic art of zigzag, he can be philosophical about it. At staff meetings, he has been heard to crack, somewhat ruefully, about "rising above principle."

"Rationing Poverty." The high, rigid price supports that haunt Apostle Benson and the U.S. were adopted originally as a World War II incentive to greater production. After the war they were kept, theoretically to help the farmer make the transition back to peacetime. That they are no real help to the basic problem is easily demonstrable: more than 20% of the drop in the price of farm products occurred between February 1951 and January 1955, while high, rigid supports were in effect. As the worldwide demand for food fell off, the supports only encouraged production for the Government's bins. As of last week, the Commodity Credit Corp. had more than $9 billion of U.S. taxpayers' money (equal to the total U.S. budget of 1940) invested in surplus crops and crop loans, the bulk of it in wheat, corn and cotton.

What has happened in cotton clearly illustrates the ineffectiveness of high, rigid supports even when they are coupled with strict acreage controls. Because the U.S. was supporting (guaranteeing to buy) cotton at 90% of parity, this put a price floor under the world market. Undersold in foreign markets by cheaper cotton grown abroad, undersold at home by cheaper synthetics, U.S. cotton piled up in Government warehouses. To continue getting supports at 90%, cotton farmers last year voted to reduce their acreage by 12% and to market no more cotton than they could grow on the reduced acreage. But then they called on every new device of technology to raise yields per acre 22%, and wound up with a total cotton crop 7% larger than the year before.

The case of burley tobacco has a different ending but the same moral. In 1954, when Congress voted flexible supports for "basic crops," supports for burley were left at 90% of parity. To hold production down, acreage had to be cut and cut. By last year more than 60% of the burley tobacco farms in the U.S. were down to the minimum allowed by the law, one-half of one acre, a plot so small that it can hardly be farmed efficiently. Assistant U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz has a label for the process: "rationing poverty."

Bucking the Revolution. For the most part, farmers who reaped the high profits of the war years, paying off their debts and piling up capital assets, have been able to stand the postwar adjustment without real distress. The man hardest hit by the slump is the "new" farmer, who moved onto the farm after World War II when original costs were high. Such a farmer is Melvin Anderson, 40, who rents and farms 230 acres owned by a prosperous big farmer in Henry County, Ill., the "hog capital of the country."

Five years ago Anderson, married and the father of two small daughters, left his job in the John Deere Wagon Works in Moline, Ill., bucked the course of the farm revolution, and went back to the farm. He is in trouble. Twice in 1955 he had to sell his hogs before they were ready for market because he ran out of corn and could not afford any more. His luck on cattle was no better.

But Anderson, a stolid, philosophical farmer, came out of his troubles by tightening his belt. Last February, when he was due to make a big payment on his $1,200 International Harvester tractor, he sold it and bought a $600 John Deere model, with about the same power but fewer gadgets. ("I do the same work at half the price," he explains.) Last month when a payment came due on his 1952 car, he sold it and bought a 1950 model. With the difference, he had $275 left over to apply on other bills. He wanted a new harrow, but he looked at the size of his loan at the bank, and changed his mind. "I put in a lot of time on that old harrow," he said, "and it's good for another year."

Despite his obvious hardships, Republican Anderson is not in a mood of revolt. Of Secretary Benson, he says with understanding, "I'd hate to have his job." Of President Eisenhower's veto of the farm bill: "With everybody thinking he had to sign it because of politics, he proved to me that he done what he thought was the right thing."

For every farmer like Melvin Anderson, however, there is another of a different shade of opinion, ranging all the way to those who speak of both Eisenhower and Benson in four-letter words. With farms 93% electrified, with capital costs high, with a standard of living that reaches as high as television, big cars, fur stoles, and college educations for the children, farmers do not find it easy to reduce their standards as Anderson has done. Said a farmer in Corning, in southwest Iowa: "I was just looking at the month's electric bill-- $30. Why that's what I used to make in a month as a hired hand back in 1939. And my wife goes down and buys two lamps and puts 100-watt bulbs in them. If I tried to make her live like I did, I'd have to tie her to a post first."

From the farms the harder times have spread to the small towns in the farm country. Hardest hit are implement dealers, who do most of their business with farmers. Auto dealers have been hurt, too, but not nearly as much. Clark Sheesley, the Buick-Chevrolet dealer in Cambridge, Ill. is doing 75% less business with farmers than he was a year ago, but his total business is down a still uncomfortable--but much smaller--25%.

Waning Influence. There was a time when reduced income on the farm would soon make itself sharply felt in the whole economy. In 1956, despite the fact that farm income fell for nearly five years, the rest of the economy is at the greatest level of prosperity in history. Despite the dire warnings of farm-state politicos about the danger of "farm-fed farm-led depression," the 1956 conclusion is inescapable: since the U.S. economy has grown and shifted more to the industrial and away from the agrarian, the farm economy is no longer as critical a factor as it was two decades ago.

The same point applies to politics. Since urban population has grown and farm population has decreased, the "farm vote" is no longer the key factor that it once was. Many farmers now make at least part of their income at jobs in nearby towns (in 1955 U.S. farmers made 30% of their income from nonfarm sources), and are as likely to be affected by town political sentiment as they are to have an effect upon it. Don R. Massie, a paper-company salesman who is a Republican committeeman in Bloomington, Ill., says: "Farmers used to run everything in politics here. And now they don't amount to anything--but we've been trying to keep that quiet."

Corn Fed. All of this proves that the farm situation is neither economically nor politically as explosive as the clamor would indicate. Farm-state Congressmen who joined the stampede to vote for the Democrats' ill-conceived farm bill (TIME, April 23) have received relatively little mail about the President's veto. The reaction has been selective, largely by crop. Many Southern farmers are angry because the support prices on cotton and peanuts will be considerably below last year's. There is some anger and disappointment among wheat farmers because the wheat price support announced by the President (a national average of $2 a bushel), although 19-c- above the previously announced price, is 8-c- below last year's average.

The corn price situation is similar: the President's guarantee adds up to a national average of $1.50 a bushel, 10-c- above the previously announced level, but 8-c- below last year. Nevertheless, many corn farmers seem to be pleased. At a Senate Republican Policy Committee meeting last week, a colleague turned to corn-growing Illinois' corn-saying Everett Dirksen and cracked: "Ev, it looks as if Benson, of all people in the world, just re-elected you."

Since January farm prices have been edging up, and if the edging continues, the worry among farmers will ease a little. As rain fell over much of the farm belt last week, farmers were far more jubilant than they were over anything that Washington might do for support prices. As farm-area merchants know, when prices are rising, farmers start to look and then to smile and then to buy. Said one farm observer: "A farmer feels a lot better with hogs at $15 if they are on their way up from $11, not on the way down from $20."

Politically, the prospects for 1956 are that there will be some shift of farm votes from the Republican to the Democratic side, but no revolt. Some politicians think that the switch may be large enough to change some congressional seats, but barring plummeting prices or Act of God, there is no reason to believe that Dwight Eisenhower will not carry the farm belt in November.

Unsighted Goal. This does not mean that the farm situation will not be a top issue. Even Benson's flexible support program is obviously not the whole answer. Farm income continued to fall and surpluses to pile up for a year after the flexible support program became effective. The proposed soil bank would cut surpluses by restraining each farmer's production, but its value remains to be proved. In a study just completed for the National Planning Association, Agricultural Economics Experts John D. Black (Harvard) and James D. Bonnen (Michigan State) argue that the ultimate solution is to let farm commodities seek their level in the market and supplement farmers' income with direct payments from the Federal Treasury. This is close to the old Brannan plan, which many farmers consider an unpalatable dole.

Commenting on Lyndon Johnson's charge that he had broken his promises to farmers, President Eisenhower last week reiterated the position that he has taken from the first: that his real goal is "100% of parity for the farmer in the marketplace, meaning that we must get the supply and demand so adjusted that the farmer is getting a good price without depending upon 90% or 80% or any other kind of supports."

At spring planting time 1956, that goal is by no means in sight. There is scant chance that it can even be approached in an election year. It can be reached only if U.S. farmers, the President, the Congress, and the Secretary of Agriculture strip the politics and the past away from the problem and recognize what the revolution has wrought.

*Which was a sharp stimulant to the U.S. farmer and an effective remedy for the Truman Administration's deteriorating farm problem; e.g., the market price of corn rose from $1.16 a bushel in February 1949 to $1.65 in February 1951.

*Since Edward Everett, Dorchester, Mass. Unitarian minister and renowned orator, who was Secretary of State in the Cabinet of Millard Fillmore (1852-53).

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