Farmers Outfoxed

Franklin D. Roosevelt last week pulled a fast one, had the farm bloc sweating and cursing--and right where he wanted it. Just when they thought they had plugged every chink in the farm-price structure, F.D.R. blandly found a hole as big as a barn door.

First Claude Wickard, the farmers' friend, blasted more-than-parity prices in a speech in Atlanta, sent farm prices skidding. Two days later, the President issued a formal statement about the price bill he had just signed. Said he: "I am requesting the departments of the Government possessing commodities to make such commodities available to other departments in order to aid our war effort. This request, primarily, will affect the cotton stocks of the Commodity Credit Corp. and will permit such stocks to be utilized, directly or by exchange, in the production of war goods. . . . The request will also include grain and other commodities. . . ."

This was a body blow to the farm bloc. Screamed one Southern Congressman: "The President, by executive announcement, has repealed the safeguards in the price-control bill."

The method by which he repealed them was exquisitely simple. Claude Wickard, red-faced and squirming but holding his ground, explained it before the enraged Senate Agriculture Committee: no law, he said, stopped him from unloading Government stocks, at Government prices, privately, for the war needs of other Government departments. He could have his surplus wheat made into bread to feed the Army & Navy, his cotton into sheets and shirts to sleep and clothe them, his corn into alcohol for their shells. When the Senators were still skeptical (the price bill prohibits "sale or disposition" of Government-held stocks except as provided in other limiting acts), he said he "understood" that the question had already been referred to Attorney General Francis Biddle for a ruling.

Since Army & Navy are taking a huge chunk of all farmers' produce, Messrs. Roosevelt & Wickard had a pretty big price stick after all. A disgusted Congress could still vote more farm subsidies and dare the President to veto them. But as House Banking Committee Chairman Henry B. Steagall ruefully put it, "there's nothing in the bill that can repeal the right of free speech"--and a Roosevelt crack is still good for a break in the market.

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