Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

An alliterative and unlikely combination of Cadillacs, Chevrolets and corn stirred Capitol Hill last week as New York's Republican Senator Kenneth Keating took to the Senate floor to defend the well-publicized trip of a Mr. Smith, who went to Washington in a Cadillac bought with federal money he got for not growing corn.

Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman had already scoffed at Farmer-Businessman William T. Smith's trip as "a partisan propaganda stunt"--which it clearly was. He had also protested that Smith was hardly a typical corn farmer--which he never claimed to be. But Smith's stunt was still singularly effective. Last year he grew 262 acres of corn on his 1,200-acre dairy and poultry farm at Big Flats, N.Y., where he also owns a restaurant and has varied business investments. This year, in protest against the Government's subsidy program, he agreed to take 104 acres of his poorest corn land out of production. He picked up his advance Government check for $3,049, used it as a down payment on a new, bronze $6,100 Cadillac, promised to pay the balance with another $3,451 check due from the Government at season's end. He dressed up the rear end of his new car with a sign reading

THANK YOU, J.F.K. . . THANK YOU,ORVILLE, and drove to Washington to be greeted by Keating and 19 other Republican Senators.

Secretary Freeman snorted that such corny humor titillates only the many who are ignorant about the Government's farm program, but he quickly demonstrated that he was not above taking part in similar stunts himself. Five Illinois corn and soybean farmers got so mad reading about Farmer Smith's Cadillac that they jumped into a 1959 Chevrolet, drove all night and arrived in Washington the next afternoon to complain that Smith was not really a farmer at all, and was "creating a bad impression on city folks." The travelers were a motley band two were Republicans, three were members of the subsidy-opposing Farm Bureau, and one was named Patrick Henry. But all made less than $6,000 a year and claimed that they could not get along without federal help. Freeman found time to receive them warmly, and commented: "If all of you farmers were as well off as Mr. Smith, we wouldn't need any Government program."

This, of course, didn't explain why well-off Mr. Smith should be made more well off by the Government at the taxpayers' expense--and for not working. But at week's end. the Government moved to make him just a mite less affluent. Freeman's Agriculture Department fined Cadillac Smith $321.84 for planting 7.1 acres more wheat last year than allowed by his 18.9-acre quota.

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