Fee, Fie, Foe, Farmers

"I am therefore obliged," wrote President Coolidge last week, reverting, after some 5,500 more emphatic words, to the formal executive monotone, "to return Senate Bill 3555 . . . without my ap-proval."

Another name for Senate Bill 3555 was the Surplus Control Act and another, as everyone knows, was the McNary-Haugen Bill, and another, according to some advisers of the U. S. Farmer, was "Salvation." The name finally applied to it by President Coolidge, as to its predecessor of last year, was, in effect, "Monkey Busi-ness."

How many U. S. farmers actually read the bill, or read President Coolidge's veto message, will never be known. Historians, studying another debacle of agricultural legislation in the U. S., pointed out causes and clauses.

Fee. S. 3555 proposed to set up a Federal fund from which cooperative associations of farmers could borrow money to help them market their products. That was all right with President Coolidge. S. 3555 proposed a Federal farm board to administer the fund. That was all right with President Coolidge. S. 3555 proposed that when the producers of a given commodity had produced more of that commodity than they could market in an "orderly" fashion, or more than they were willing to try to market with the aid of the loan fund only, that an "equalization fee" should be levied upon each unit of the commodity in question, to augment the loan fund. That was not all right with President Coolidge. S. 3555 further proposed that separate special councils be formed to advise the Federal board on the status of each & every commodity, so that the board would know when to levy the "equalization fees." That was not all right with President Coolidge, either. President Coolidge opposed the "equalization fee" for several reasons, some basic, some specific. Specifically he objected because S. 3555 provided that the fee might be levied upon the farmer's product any where between the field it grew in and the place where it was consumed. Naturally, at whatever point in the commodity's progress from farmer to consumer the fee was levied, the commodity's price would rise automatically. Ultimate payment of the fee would thus be by the consumer, not by the producer. In other words, the "equalization fee" was not a self-help device for the farmers but a subtle sales tax upon the whole country. The "equalization fee" was to be levied on imports, also. It thus became, in simple fact, a tariff. President Coolidge objected to a sales tax or a tariff administered by a Federal farm board, for the reason that control of taxation and the tariff are carefully vested in the Congress by the Constitution. More over, President Coolidge could see that not even the proposed farm board would have ultimate control of the farm tax or the farm tariff, for behind the board, with power to command, were the proposed advisory councils for each commodity. Aside from economic considerations, S. 3555 looked unconstitutional. President Coolidge attached to his veto message a 6,000-word ruling from Attorney General Sargent to that effect.

As to the economics of S. 3555, President Coolidge observed that raising domestic crop prices to withhold a crop surplus would make the surplus larger than ever. And as the ever-larger surplus was dumped into foreign markets, foreign prices would go lower and lower. Low food prices abroad would help foreign industries in their competition with U. S. industries, thus depleting the buying power of U. S. workers, who are the natural customers of the U. S. farmer in the first instance.

But even before such economic effects resulted, S. 3555 would, the President thought, encounter insuperable administrative obstacles. To collect equalization fees from an untold number of farmers and middlemen would require a prodigious accounting staff. And before the fees could be collected, their size would have to be fixed, and fixing the fee would require endless investigating of costs. Price-fixing by the Government would be hard enough, dangerous enough, undesirable enough; but S. 3555 failed, moreover, to provide any deterrent to wasteful methods among farmers or middlemen. Besides ignoring the law of Supply & Demand, it reposed extraordinary faith in human efficiency, not to mention honesty.

Fie. Outlining his main objections to S. 3555, President Coolidge became increasingly exercised as he discussed demerits in detail. He employed the following words and phrases: "Cumbersome . . . crudely camouflaged . . . vicious temptations . . . autocratic authority . . . bureaucracy gone mad . . . plague of petty officialdom . . . intolerable tyranny . . . swarms of inspectors . . . evasion and dishonesty . . . impenetrable maze of contracts . . . bewildering snarl of accounting problems . . . catastrophes . . . distortions . . . ponderously futile . . . an extraordinary process of economic reasoning if such it could be called . . . flagrant case . . . insidious attack . . . folly . . . naive . . . preposterous . . . nonsense."

Foe. Spread out through the long message, these words had a cumulative effect and constituted a whacking rebuke to McNary-Haugen Congressmen, whom the President virtually pictured as men who had wrought against instead of for the U. S. farmers. He reminded Congress that he had indicated in his message last December the kind of farm relief legislation which would be approved by the Administration. He accused Congress of making S. 3555 more objectionable than its predecessor, thus, in effect, forcing a veto. He again advocated the passage of legislation which would:

1) Strengthen marketing agencies in the control of the farmers themselves.

2) Strengthen constitutional tariff protection on farm products. Farmers. Not the least part of the outcry against the veto of S. 3555 came from people who failed to distinguish between tariff protection on products made for domestic use, such as Industry enjoys, and artificial price inflation on domestic products which are exported. The sharpness, approaching bitterness, of the President's language, so aroused many people that they failed to attach significance to the President's declaration for "a strong protective tariff on farm products." That was a new note for President Coolidge to strike as clearly as he did, but judging from public comment, it went unnoticed. The President's signing of the Jones-White bill, establishing a near-subsidy for the shipping business, on the same day the farmers were denied "Salvation," heightened the impression that there had been unfair discrimination between Agriculture and Industry.

The attitude of Congress was one of dudgeonous resentment, but sufficient Senators led by party-faithful Republican-Leader Curtis, reversed their votes and sustained the veto.

The veto message took aback President S. H. Thompson of the American Farm Bureau Federation. He said: "Millions of American citizens are disappointed in this act of Mr. Coolidge. The effort to get economic justice for agriculture will be continued with increasing energy. . . ."

In the so-called Corn Belt, the Des Moines Register said: "Probably never in our 150 years of Congressional Govern-ment has the deliberate act of two Congresses been dismissed with such utter want of appreciation. . . . Mussolini has not said anything about Parliamentary Government in Europe that this message does not say by implication of Congressional Government with us."

In Nebraska, the Omaha Bee-News was more moderate and merely called on Congress to "call Mr. Coolidge's bluff" by passing a bill without the equalization fee. But Governor Adam McMullen issued a proclamation :

"The time has come for action by the farmers themselves. . . ." he proclaimed.

"Let 100,000 farmers confront that convention (at Kansas City) and as American freemen demand economic justice.

"Let 100,000 farmers face their delegates and challenge their opposition.

"Let 100,000 farmers march through the streets of the city that has grown into a great industrial centre through the toil of men and women who have struggled against odds to wrest a bare existence from the soil.

"Farmers, arise as crusaders of old! Defend your families, property and freedom. Go to Kansas City. . . . Go yourself and meet your neighbors there. Form a living petition of 100,000 souls and demand your rights!"

Subsequently, Governor McMullen talked about the "Farmers' Army" and "a second caravan of the Covered Wagon." At Springfield, Ill., several hundred farmers flocked to the State arsenal for a caucus. Another flock met at Galesburg, Ill. President Earl C. Smith of the Illinois Agricultural Association telegraphed the

Kansas City Chamber of Commerce please to make ready a camping ground, with commissary and sanitary equipment. Conrad H. Mann, general chairman of Kansas City's convention arrangements, replied: "Tell the farmers . . . we'll welcome them with open arms. We can take care of 100,000 farmers. If necessary we will tent our 1,500 acre playground--Swope Park. . . ." Citizens watched for another Coxey's Army, for a recrudescence of Populism, or for the passing of an empty thunder-gust.