Harvest Race

So eager was President Hoover to push ahead with Farm Relief, to catch this year's harvest at the crest, that last week, before its membership was completed, he ordered his new Farm Board to assemble in Washington for its initial meeting July 15. Five men had accepted service on this nine-man board: Alexander H. Legge, Chairman; James Clifton Stone, Vice-Chairman; Carl Williams, C. B. Denman, Charles C. Teague. Secretary of Agriculture Hyde, the sixth member ex officio, was despatched by the President to the Mid-West, there to search out likely candidates for the other three places, to interview them, report on their fitness.

With a two-thirds quorum already chosen, the Board was ready to organize. Its first duty was to get itself squared away in Washington. Looking for possible office space, inspectors went through the old Southern R. R. building, at Pennsylvania Avenue and 13th Street, lately acquired by the U. S. Secretaries, assistants, experts, clerks--the large personnel of bureaucracy --had to be hired, set to work.

Wheat was the Board's primary problem. Between the Board and that crop, the harvest of which was moving north out of Kansas at the rate of 25 miles per day, a hard-driven race had developed. The Board's first aim was to interpose its relief machinery before this year's wheat crop heaps up on last year's carry over and again depresses prices. A scant two months remained in which to erect dikes against the grain flood. In that time a wheat advisory council had to be named by the Board. The council had to make recommendations as to methods of handling the crop. The wheat co-operatives had to join together to create a stabilization corporation which could borrow from the Board.

Last week President Hoover was still searching for a wheat representative on his Farm Board and having a hard time finding someone satisfactory to the varying shades of political opinion in that major branch of husbandry. When Chairman Legge accepted his appointment, he was in a Kansas wheat field, watching the progress of the harvest, pondering the great problem that lay ahead of his Board.

Aged 63, farm-born, business-bred (International Harvester for 40 years), Chairman Legge had nothing to say in advance of his new work. "Results, not words," his friends said for him.

To give the Board a headstart on the wheat problem, the Department of Agriculture last week began a nationwide movement to get wheat-growers to increase their own storage facilities on the farm. Purpose: if each wheat man stored a part of his own crop, the autumn market peak would be diminished, prices would be steadied, car shortages and terminal embargoes would be avoided.

It was the Hoover hope to have the Farm Board installed on recess appointments and swinging along at full stride before the Senate reconvenes Aug. 19 to take up the members' confirmations.