Bitter Harvest

Sad-eyed and forlorn, a high official of the U.S. Government shuffled into the Senate cafeteria on the ground floor of the Capitol one day last week. He had visited several Senators' offices on important national business that morning, but not one of them had invited him to lunch. In the crowded cafeteria, amid the laughing, chattering Senators and their guests, he was utterly alone. Nobody spoke to him, nobody noticed him.

Clutching his tray, he wandered to a table near the wall and sat down to eat, still alone. When, at long last, a chance passer-by said hello to him, the official eagerly stood up to shake hands. Without prompting, he launched into a monologue that splashed forth like water from a spilled pitcher. Things were looking brighter, he said. His mail was unmistakably encouraging, and surveys had proved him right. His program was "sound," he insisted. Four-fifths of the problem was solved, and it is only "the one-fifth that gives us trouble." Plaintively, he predicted that the November elections would vindicate him, that politicians who repudiated him and his program would be defeated. On and on he rambled, fervently, insistently. Then the passer-by went his way, and Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson--disheartened by the failure of his programs, burdened by the staggering costs of farm subsidies that he had once hoped to abolish, damned by farmers, ignored by Congress, repudiated by many fellow Republicans --finished his meal in lonely silence.

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