Penalty v. Bribe

Last year the Government paid cotton farmers some $100,000,000 for plowing under about one quarter of their crop, only to find that the harvest of 13,177,000 bales was even larger than the year before. Good growing weather and subterfuges on the part of the farmers were jointly responsible.

All over the South last week John Cotton Farmer was getting ready to hitch up his mule, plow the earth between last year's bountiful rows, sow another bumper crop. The Southern Railway said that it had hauled four times as much fertilizer so far this year as last. John Cotton Farmer seemed determined to raise by intensive cultivation of his reduced acreage as much cotton as he could in 1934, and thus make a double profit out of the Gov ernment's attempt to bribe him into cutting down his output. Such a dishonest state of affairs in the South caused Federal officials to scratch their heads to find other means of restricting cotton production. The Brothers Bankhead of Alabama, Senator John Hollis and Representative William Brockman, popped up last month with a plan for compulsory crop reduction. They proposed a ban on ginning more than a given quota of cotton for each farmer. If John Cotton Farmer tried to have more than his allowance ginned, he would be fined $250 for each illegal bale, subject himself to imprisonment.* President Roosevelt, to whom the Brothers Bankhead took their plan, had a more politic proposal. He suggested that, instead of directly penalizing greedy growers, a tax of 12-c- per Ib. be put on cotton ginned above the quota, to take the profit out of excess production. Thus by directly limiting the number of bales rather than continuing the AAA's leaky acreage reduction plan, it was hoped that this year's output could be held to 9,000,000 bales, the price boosted above 15-c-. It was one thing for the Bankheads to gain the approval of President Roosevelt but quite another to enlist the sympathy of Secretary of Agriculture Wallace. Secretary Wallace has built up the whole AAA program on voluntary action. He has balked at invoking the drastic license provisions of the law lest a minority revolt be precipitated. Besides, although native Alabamans, neither of the Bankhead brothers was an experienced cotton man. Their hometown of Jasper is in the Alabama coal country. Both Bankheads are lawyers by profession. Senator John dabbles in coal as a sideline. Representative William has a farm on which 24 acres of cotton were grown last year. He is best known as the father of much-married Eugenia and beauteous, hood-lidded Tallulah, whose theatrical eccentricities he can condone since he himself ran away to Boston at the age of 19, for a short-lived venture on the stage. Having made voluntary action the keystone of his agricultural program, Secretary Wallace was unwilling to go in for compulsion on anybody's say-so--certainly not the Bankheads'--unless he was convinced that the "need" was great and that "an overwhelming majority wants a delegation of Governmental centralized power to take care of the difficulty." Three weeks ago he sent out 50,000 questionnaires to cotton planters asking if the extra-quota taxation plan was agreeable to them. To the Secretary's amazement, the Lawyers Bankhead proved to have had a keen nose for cotton sentiment. Of the 25,000 questionnaires returned, 7,000 had been tabulated last week. More than 80% of the answers were overwhelmingly favorable to the Bankhead-Bankhead-Roosevelt program. Only 2% were definitely negative. Senator Bankhead announced that Secretary Wallace had now given his "unqualified support" to the tax plan. Although the AAA was still plugging its program to disburse $130,000,000 to farmers to cut their 1934 cotton acreage from 40,000,000 to 25,000,000, that program could be abandoned overnight. By paying last year's bounties the Government had merely secured options to cut acreage, was in no way bound to go through with the deal. Representative Bankhead has already introduced the Bankhead-Bankhead bill in the House. If enactment is delayed, said Senator Bankhead, he would try to hang the measure on "the first House revenue bill that comes over."

* He could save his unginned cotton, but seeded cotton deteriorates more rapidly than ginned cotton, is more bulky to store.

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