Two Bids

Last week Democratic Nominee Franklin Roosevelt made his big 1936 bid for the farm vote. In addition to such boons as AAA, FCA, RA which he has in the past three years offered Agriculture, in a swift play from Hyde Park he upped this already respectable ante. He appointed a committee headed by Rural Electrification's Morris L. Cooke to figure out a long term anti-drought program. He appointed another committee headed by Secretary Wallace to draw up plans for some form of crop insurance on at least one or two major crops. He wrote to the Senate and House Agriculture Committees urging legislation to provide easy credit to enable tenants to become farm owners. Promptly Secretary of Agriculture Wallace--who has been boosting for a Biblical plan of crop insurance whereby farmers in years of large crops would pay one-third or more of their excess crop as insurance premium and get it back in bad crop years--spread big talk of incipient Federal crop insurance over the front pages of the press.

Up from Topeka rose a terrific bleat from Governor Landon's handlers. Strongly they implied that Nominee Roosevelt had anted out of turn, anticipating the Republican Nominee's first square-off at the farm issue scheduled to be delivered at Des Moines 48 hours later. Hastily rushed to the press was Governor Landon's own crop insurance plan, to wit: "I believe that the question of crop insurance should be given the fullest attention." Two nights later at the Des Moines fair grounds, the Republican nominee laid down chip-by-chip his full bid for the agricultural vote:

1) Continuation of bounty payments to farmers who have carried out existing crop restriction contracts.

2) "Continuation of [drought] relief checks . . . seed loans and other necessary assistance. . ."

3) Farm subsidies equivalent to full tariff protection on the domestically consumed portion of crops, but no subsidies for large scale corporate farms. "Our cash benefits . . . will be limited to the production level of the family-type farm."

4) An amendment to the Federal Warehousing Act so that farmers can store excess crops on their farms, get Federal Warehouse receipts and borrow on them at the bank.

5) Introduction of new crops and the discovery of new uses for existing crops. "I am far more interested in seeing farmers paid for growing the things we know we need than in paying them for not growing the things we think we don't need."

6) Federal-State subsidies for soil conservation, water conservation, and flood control, "with local administration in the hands of the farmers themselves".

7) "Adequate credit at reasonable rates to capable tenants and experienced farmers for the purchase or refinancing of farm homes."

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