Across the Land

The world's third largest corn refinery closed down last week for lack of corn.

U.S. Food Administrator Chester Davis resigned this week for lack of authority.

The corn refinery which shut its doors is in Clinton, la., in the heart of the U.S. corn belt, where bins and elevators bulge with last year's crop.

Chester Davis resigned in Washington, where there is authority aplenty, but no one knows to whom it belongs and who should exercise it.

Thus the irony and folly of the U.S. food situation was brought squarely home to the U.S. people. In the geographical midst of plenty, muddle and mismanagement had created unnecessary shortages.

> Two other refineries had shut down within the week: the Pekin, Ill. plant of Corn Products Refining Co. (world's second largest) and the American Maize Products factory at Roby, Ind. These shutdowns were serious business: corn products are a staple of war (munitions, alcohol), as well as in civilian life. The refineries closed because, in effect, the U.S. corn growers were on strike: they didn't want to sell their corn at the $1.07 ceiling price, when they could make a better profit feeding the corn to hogs (or selling it to hog growers via the black market).

Chester Davis quickly requisitioned for the refineries, at the ceiling price, the corn now stored in 96 Midwestern elevators (estimated stock: 12 million bushels). But even this drastic maneuver would not tide the plants over more than two or three weeks.

>The nation's livestock growers were also on a kind of strike. On U.S. pastures and ranges, from Texas' giant King Ranch down to the tiniest farm, grazed more cattle (80,000,000 head) than ever before in history. Yet stockyards all over the U.S. were nearly empty. Cattle slaughtered in Federal-inspected yards had slumped to 150,000 for the week ending June 19, compared to 173,000 the preceding week. Last week the butchery was still less: in Chicago's Union Stockyards, hundreds of cattle pens were vacant.

Reason for all this was simple. Packers, who must sell at a ceiling price, refused to pay the high prices asked for cattle on the hoof. Cattlemen, blessed with the best pasture land in years because of the drenching spring rains, were content to let stock graze and fatten. Only hopeful note: when the hot drought days scorch the pasture lands, cattlemen will stampede to the markets, easing shortages in thousands of city butcher shops.

> In New Jersey, canners announced that tons of tomatoes, beans and many another vegetable would rot in the fields or in storage and not be canned unless OPA fixed 1943 ceiling prices on the canned products, allowing the canners to figure their profit.

> California fruit growers worried lest a large share of their 1943 crop go to waste in the fields for lack of 35,000 additional field hands.

La Guardia's Answer. News like this made New York City's fiery little Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia explode before a Congressional committee. Said the Little Flower: Unless Congress takes effective action on food production and distribution, "the whole administration of food is going to bog down--and hell is going to break loose in this country."

Mayor La Guardia plumped for subsidies. Congress had already made up its mind.

Congress' Answer. In the general House revolt the little understood question of subsidies had become a rallying cry. This puzzled citizens who had not watched the fight closely. Why did the idea of sub sidies, successful in Britain, make Congress so mad?

One big reason was that the Congress was sick to its innards of the Administration technique of give-us-billions-and-we'll fix-everything-up. The members felt: 1) that no conceivable number of billions could really roll back prices ; 2 ) what was needed was management, not money. The British subsidy success they understood; Britain imports 35% of its food, and controls can easily be applied from the docks to the stores. The job is as nothing compared to payments to 6,000,000 U.S. farmers.

The main Congressional feeling, beneath all these, was a deep suspicion of Federal controls. If the Administration were given an enormous new package of billions, to be handed out to all processors who behaved nicely, regimentation might become a real thing, instead of a worn-out word.

With these things in mind, the Congress killed the embryo "rollback" cold. The House, voting on a bill to extend the life of Commodity Credit Corp. (which would pay the subsidies), tacked on so many crippling amendments that any Administration official attempting to roll back prices could probably be tried, convicted and hanged.

The President, at this point, told his press conference that some people in Congress wanted to let prices go skyhigh. Be it on their heads, he said, in effect.

The Senate forthwith killed the rollback 46-to-29. Subsidies were stone-dead.

Hoover's Answer. After killing sub sidies, Congress was pushing for enactment of the Fulmer bill, which would centralize under one responsible head the functions of food production, distribution, prices, rationing. In this they heeded Herbert Hoover, who praised the bill.

Franklin Roosevelt had ridiculed such a proposal as a measure to set up another czar. He said that the Angel Gabriel himself could not satisfy everyone.

Retorted Mr. Hoover: " No responsible person has proposed a food 'czar,' nor an Angel Gabriel. What large sections of the country and the House Agriculture Committee have demanded is a Food Administrator, acting within the laws. . . . We need a manager, not a dictator."

Davis Out. This week Food Administrator Chester Davis, who had not wanted the job in the first place, resigned after three months of manful struggle. He had offered his resignation on June 16, in a letter in which he asked for an appointment with the President. He got no reply. Week later he wrote a note which was not made public, but friends of Chester Davis agreed that never had an Administration chief sent such strong words to the President -- and kept his job.

The letter of resignation was hot enough:

"I find that I have assumed a public responsibility while the authority, not only over broad food policy, but day-to day actions, is being exercised elsewhere [i.e., in OWM].

"You must have in my position a man who can wholeheartedly advocate and defend the program of broad general sub sidies. ... I cannot do this for the reason that I do not believe such subsidies will be effective in controlling inflation unless they are accompanied here, as they are in England, by current tax and savings programs that drain off excess buying power, and by tight control and management of the food supply.

"We do not have in this country anything approaching these conditions."

In a reply which began "Dear Chester," the President wrote, without his usual urbanity: "It would be unfair to you to insist that you remain in your position when you feel that, all things considered, you can not wholeheartedly support a program to hold down the cost of living."

Into this situation came the third U.S. Food Administrator in four months -- Judge Marvin Jones, smooth, bland, quiet ex-Congressman from Texas, who left the bench six months ago to aid Czar of Czars Jimmy Byrnes. He took time out to preside over the international food conference at Hot Springs, Va. (TIME, June 14). Jones apparently will have not one jot or tittle more power than Chester Davis had.

But the U.S. was not watching Washington so much as it watched its butcher shops. The citizens could understand what they saw there.

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