THE FARMER'S FOUR VOICES

The U.S. farmer speaks mostly through his farm organizations. If the farmer's voice sometimes seems garbled in transmission, it is because the farm organizations themselves differ greatly in background, makeup, leadership and outlook. The nation's major farm organizations:

American Farm Bureau Federation, Chicago. The solid, conservative giant of U.S. farm organizations, with membership representing 1,623,000 farm families in 48 states and Puerto Rico, heavily concentrated in the corn belt states of Iowa, Illinois and Indiana (the Farm Bureau is sometimes facetiously called "The American Corn Bureau"). President: roughhewn, painfully serious Charles B. Shuman, 49, an Illinois stock and grain farmer, and a teetotaling Methodist Sunday school teacher. The American Farm Bureau grew out of the agricultural recession after World War I, aligned itself with the relatively low stopgap subsidy policies of the Roosevelt Administration in the 1930s, saw the ruinous results of subsidized surpluses under the Truman Administration, has since--under the influence of its efficient, prosperous Midwestern members--generally supported Republican farm policy, e.g., the Farm Bureau held fast against this year's Democratic farm bill, opposes price floors for hogs and cattle, backs flexible supports on basic commodities.

National Farmers Union, Denver. Essentially the farm organ of Trumanite Democrats, with a voice that seems higher than its membership: 308,000 family memberships in 25 states, strongest in the wheat-growing states of North Dakota, Colorado, Oklahoma and Minnesota. President: loose-jointed, Kansas-born James G. Patton, 53, onetime high-school athletic director. General counsel: ex-President Truman's Agriculture Secretary Charles Brannan. Economic adviser: Leon Keyserling, chairman of Truman's Council of Economic Advisers. The Farmers Union was organized in Texas in 1902 by a few farmers and a country editor, and was dedicated to improving the lot of low-income "dirt farmers." Today it argues that the American farmer has as much right to Government subsidies as the railroad and airline industries, clings to the motto: "True Parity for Real Prosperity." Says President Patton: "We will coordinate our efforts with organized labor. We will work to elect Congressmen, Senators and a President who will give agriculture a better break. We will give all candidates from the presidential ones on down our views, written and verbal. We'll furnish material for their speeches. We'll even write their speeches for them if they want."

National Grange (of the Patrons of Husbandry), Washington, D.C. Patriarch of U.S. farm organizations, counting 875,000 members in 37 states, concentrated in the Northeast (Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and Maine) with large outcroppings in the Pacific Northwest. Master: plainspoken, Indiana-born Herschel D. Newsom, 51. Founded in 1867 as a fraternal lodge for farm families, the Grange still holds to some of its secret rituals, goes in less than the other farm organizations for lobbying. It supported this year's farm bill, but generally stands somewhere between the Farm Bureau and the Farmers Union, favors a commodity-by-commodity approach to the problem of farm supports.

National Farmers' Organization, Corning, Iowa. The lusty upstart of farm organizations, founded in Iowa last September by half a dozen farmers and a feed salesman, and now claiming 150,000 members (membership fee: $1), more than half of them in Iowa. President: ruddy, spellbinding Oren Lee Staley, a cattle farmer from near Rea, Mo. The phenomenal growth of the N.F.O. so upset Iowa's Republican Senator Bourke Hickenlooper that (according to Iowa Republican leaders) he reversed his earlier stand to vote against the Eisenhower Administration on this year's farm bill. The N.F.O. has held mass protest meetings in Iowa, Missouri, South Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, Illinois and Minnesota (despite an unofficial no-raiding pact with the Farmers Union in Minnesota), now is plowing fertile fields in Oklahoma and Arkansas. The N.F.O. stands for 100% parity on all commodities, floors of $20 per hundredweight under hogs and $30 under cattle--and; above all, for the ouster of Agriculture Secretary Benson. Says President Staley: "We must support our friends and punish our enemies. That's just common sense."

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