Faith, Hope & Parity

By all the laws of political parity, the historically conservative farm states should return in resounding numbers to the Republican ranks in this year's mid term elections. Indeed, there can be little hope of a nationwide Republican resurgence in 1968 unless the party can recapture its traditional power base in the heartland. Anticipating an almost reflex "crossback" of G.O.P. voters who helped elect Democrats in 1964, Iowa G.O.P. Chairman Robert Ray contends: "This extreme change from one party to another in our state was as though the voters had suddenly stepped into 20DEG weather. The shock's been too great. They have to come back this year to where it's a little warmer."

Nonetheless, the farm vote, while seldom predictable, remains one of the most enigmatic elements of all in the November balloting. Perhaps more than any other sector of the economy, agriculture has been hurt by rising prices, high taxes and tight money. A tractor that sold for $6,000 in 1961 costs $9,000 today. Interest rates for carry over credit between crops have risen in recent times from around 4% to as high as 10% a year; in some areas the cost of farm-machinery loans has gone up 4% in the past six months. "A half percent increase in interest doesn't seem like much," says Raymond Robinson, who raises livestock on a 115-acre spread near Marion, Iowa. "But on a big farm operation it can make the difference between profit and loss."

"Slip, Slide and Duck." Disaffection in the farm belt reached a peak last spring, when the Administration pictured the growers as the chief culprits and beneficiaries of soaring supermarket prices. On nationwide TV, President Johnson even suggested to housewives that they buy cheaper cuts of meat. The biggest shock to farmers was Freeman's gaffe in March expressing pleasure at a slight--if short-lived--drop in food prices. Never before had a U.S. Secretary of Agriculture publicly applauded a decrease in farm income, and the incident earned Orville the unofficial title, over much of the prairies, of "Secretary Against Agriculture."

Nor was the farm belt impressed by Freeman's characteristically uninhibited reply when he was asked by Democratic congressional candidates in Washington how they should answer consumer complaints about the cost of living. Advised Orville: "Slip, slide and duck. If you have to choose a side, take the farmer's side. Housewives aren't nearly as well organized." To suspicious rural minds, the comment was hardly reassuring.

Bounteous Breadbasket. Farmers, who have endless faith in the land and endemic hope for the future, still practice grumbling as a full-time avocation. And in fact, farm parity--the New Deal equation for measuring their purchasing power--has itself done some slipping and sliding. Under Truman, parity averaged 107.5%; it dropped to 84.5% during the Eisenhower years; since 1961 it has fallen to 78%. For all the advances in agricultural technology, farmers still earn only two-thirds the average income of nonfarmers. Their discontent was reflected in a poll published this month by the influential Farm Journal. Of 5,000 ballots returned by farmer subscribers, 87% urged cuts in federal spending to fight inflation; 63% voted in favor of getting the Government completely out of the farm-price-support business.

Nevertheless, farm prosperity, whatever its relation to the rest of the economy, is a fact. Despite inflation and the decline in parity, net farm receipts in the past five years have risen at least twice as fast as costs--thanks largely to increased federal subsidies that will total $3.5 billion this year, v. less than $1 billion in 1960 under Eisenhower's Agriculture Secretary Ezra Benson. Gross farm income for 1966 is estimated at $49.2 billion--highest ever--while net income is expected to reach $16.1 billion, second highest in history. And in many regions, harvests--and prices--this fall have been bounteous.

TIME correspondents crisscrossing the Midwest in recent weeks have found little evidence that farmers, however opposed in theory to big government, resent Great Society programs, many of which are being channeled into rural areas. In the past two years, the Office of Economic Opportunity has made 30,000 antipoverty loans totaling more than $51 million to encourage income-producing agricultural enterprise. Much of the major thrust of the urban-renewal program is not aimed at cities but at decaying small towns.

Mixed Futures. Thus election trends in the farm belt show no consistent pattern. The House delegations of Kansas and South Dakota, both solidly Republican, are expected to remain so, while in Indiana two Democrats elected to traditionally Republican House seats two years ago are expected to be returned to Washington. In Nebraska, Clair Callan, 46, a lone Democratic Congressman swept into office in 1964, is given an even chance of re-election against a strong challenger, former G.O.P. State Chairman Robert V. Denny, 50, but the rest of the state's Washington contingent is expected to remain Republican, including conservative U.S. Senator Carl Curtis, who is being challenged by Democratic Governor Frank Morrison. In Minnesota, Incumbent Democratic Senator Walter ("Fritz") Mondale is expected to retain his seat.

Of all the Midwest states, changes are most likely in Iowa, where Republicans lost five of their six House seats in 1964, and hope to win back at least two; in Wisconsin, where Freshman Democrat John Race has compiled an unimpressive congressional record; in Ohio, where Democrats are resigned to losing at least one of their three freshman House members; and in Illinois, where Republican Chuck Percy is favored over aging Democratic Senator Paul Douglas, and one freshman Democratic Congressman, Gale Schisler, is in difficulty because of gerrymandering of his district in favor of Republicans, and white backlash resulting from Negro demonstrations. Overall, the odds are that the Republicans may win more than half of the 17 House seats that they lost in the Midwest in the Johnson landslide. If so, they may not have exactly recaptured the farm belt for the Grand Old Party, but they may well have done better there than anywhere else. Nationwide, of 65 freshman Democrats elected to the House in 1964, at least 25, or slightly more than one-third, are expected to be replaced by Republicans.

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