TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/election/28elect/28elect.012

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                                                                                May 6, 1929

HUSBANDRY

Halterophora Capitata



     In an orange grove near Orlando, Fla., last month, a U.S.
Department of Agriculture employee cut open an orange, prepared to
sink his teeth into it, halted at a horrid sight -- maggots! He
fairly ran to a laboratory where, under a microscope, he made a
terrible discovery: the grubs were larvae of Halterophora
capitata (Mediterranean fruit fly), most vicious and destructive
of dipterous pests, never before found in the U.S. Out went the
alarm over Florida. Inspection showed that the infestation had
spread through three counties -- Seminole, Orange and Lake
American. Legionaries volunteered as fruit inspectors.

     In Washington, President Hoover described the appearance of
halterophora capitata as "a grave emergency." He called upon
Congress to authorize the transfer, from the Department of
Agriculture's boll weevil fund, of $4,250,000 to fight the
Florida fly. The House complied promptly, last week. The Senate
took its time.


Senators v. Hoover

     Campaign speeches are written to mean a lot of things to
many men. Candidate Hoover's were no exception. Last week the
more incongruous of his campaign supporters arose in the Senate
to decry what they called "inconsistencies" between the Hoover
position on farm relief before the election and after.

     Candidate Hoover discussed husbandry and its problems in his
closing campaign speech, at St. Louis. President Hoover
recommended to Congress a farm relief plan, consisting of tariff
revisions and the creation of a Federal Farm Board with "adequate
working capital" to reorganize marketing, to assist co-operatives
handle surplus crops. Later, he opposed the export debenture pan
produced by the Senate, whereby exporters of farm produce would
receive a bounty equal to one-half the tariff rate on the same
commodity.

     Deserters. First to square off at the President's farm
program was florid, blinking Senator Smith Wildman Brookhart of
Iowa. A vociferous champion of radical farm measures, Senator
Brookhart had pleaded the Hoover cause in 200 stump speeches last
autumn. He had shouted to rural audiences that the Republican
candidate was "progressive" on farm legislation. "Progressive" in
those days meant much more than it does now.

     Last week Senator Brookhart called the Senate's attention to
quotations from Mr. Hoover's campaign speeches, contrasted them
with his official statements as President:

     Candidate Hoover: "The most urgent economic problem . . . is
agriculture. It must be solved."

     President Hoover: "The difficulties of agriculture cannot be
cured in a day . . . by legislation . . . by the Federal
government alone."

     Candidate Hoover: "The traditional cooperative is . . . not
a complete solution."

     Senator Brookhart: "In his (Hoover's) message to Congress
there is not method pointed out for a solution except loans to
co-operatives."

     Candidate Hoover: "Another part of the solution must be to
secure greater stability in prices."

     President Hoover: "No governmental agencies should engage in
the buying and selling and price-fixing of products."

     Senator Brookhart: "This is where the price-fixing
proposition comes in and that dogma of price-fixing now rises up
to nullify the pledge the President made, the one that perhaps
influenced more farmers than any other in the campaign."

     Candidate Hoover: "We give the Federal Farm Board every arm
with which to deal with the multitude of problems."

     Senator Brookhart: "This Senate Bill gives it no arm to buy
and sell the surpluses of farm products . . . cuts out the very
pledge made by the President so distinctly."

     Tactics. Despite Senator Brookhart and friends, however,
President Hoover's opposition to the Senate bill began to show
results. Support of the debenture plan began to crumble. Informal
Senate polls predicted its probable defeat. Its advocates schemed
how they could transfer it from the farm bill to the tariff bill,
explaining that its location there would be more logical. In the
tariff bill they thought it would muster more House support,
would be harder for the President to veto. Nebraska's Norris
drafted an amendment to reduce the bounty on crops over-produced.

     Many a Senator put aside his own opinions in favor of the
President's to hasten action on this legislation. North Dakota's
young Nye, usually troublesome, saw the futility of wrestling
with the Hoover bloc in the House. Said he: "There is no use
wasting time. . . . We ought to agree upon a bill promptly so
that the farmers will get assistance in this year's crops."

     More potent support for the Hoover position came,
unexpectedly, from Frank Orren Lowden, mightiest of Farmer's
friends, the man who withdrew his candidacy at Kansas City when
the Republican National Convention refused to endorse the
equalization fee, and sulked on his Illinois estate through the
campaign. Mr. Lowden said: "It becomes the duty of all sincere
friends of farm relief to cooperate with the Administration in
giving effect to its program." Reports filled the capital that
Mr. Lowden might be asked to head the Federal Farm Board.

     The House Bill. -- The full force of Hoover authority was
plainly exhibited when the House, docile and well-pledged, passed
the administration's farm bill 367 to 34. (The House passed the
first McNary-Haugen Bill 214 to 178; the second, 204 to 122.)
Fenced off with the barbed wire of special rules which kept out
all amendments including the debenture plan, the measure was
practically unchanged by eight days of debate. It provided for: A
Federal Farm Board, supplied with $500,000,000 to advance to farm
co-operatives for marketing purposes, to stabilization
corporations for buying and holding surplus crops.


June 24, 1929
HUSBANDRY
End & Beginning

     Farm relief last week actually began its journey from the
field of legislation to the husbandman's acres. The Congress,
straining and wheezing, passed an administration bill, minus the
export debenture plan and President Hoover, signing it with a
smile and two pens, called it "The most important measure ever
passed by congress in aid of a single industry." It was an end
and a beginning.

     Much legislative maneuvering was necessary to get the
measure through to the White House. First the Senate, full of ill
temper, refused by a vote of 46 to 43, to accept the conference
report in which the export debenture plan was stricken from the
bill. President Hoover was openly flouted by those who either
honestly believed in this plan or felt that honestly believed in
this plank or felt that the House, heretofore gagged, should be
given a chance to express itself. Speaker Longworth and other
leaders had refused to give the House a vote on the debenture pan
for two reasons: 1) it would force mid-western Congressmen to go
on record on a politically troublesome issue; 2) it would be a
backdown by the House on its claim that the Senate had no
constitutional authority to originate such a "revenue-raising"
plan.

     Not until President Hoover called House and Senate leaders
into conference was the way cleared for the bill's enactment.
Exerting himself as party chief, the President virtually ordered
that the House vote on this question as the Senate's price of
recession. So the House voted 250 to 113 against the debenture
plan. The next day, as gracefully as possible, the Senate
acquiesced.

     When President Hoover picks the members of the now
authorized Federal Farm Board, there will come into existence an
agency for agriculture comparable in scope and authority with the
Interstate Commerce Commission for transportation, the Federal
Reserve Board for finance.

     The board will be composed of eight members selected by the
President and confirmed by the Senate, plus the Secretary of
Agriculture ex officio. It will have a working capital of
$500,000,000 supplied from the U.S. Treasury. With this cash to
lend, it will try to induce farmers to forego some of their normal
independence, to join co-operative marketing associations. These
associations, with money borrowed from the board, will attempt to
move food from farm to market more cheaply, with less spoilage and
waste, than is now accomplished by scattered and individual private
effort.

     Less than one-third of the 6,500,000 U.S. farmers are now
members of joint selling organizations. Success of farm relief
now depends almost entirely upon the extent to which the farmers
will now cooperate. Many experts believe that more than two-
thirds of the farmers must join co-operatives before any
appreciable bone-fit will accrue to husbandry as a whole.

     A second important task of the new board will be to help
organize and finance special stabilization corporations among
farmers to purchase surplus farm products from glutted seasonal
markets and hold them in storage pending better prices. In the
past such large-scale grain corporations on private capital and
under private control have failed. It remains to be seen whether
federal cash and supervision can make them successful. Critics of
the new farm relief legislation predict that the Federal Farm
Board will loan large sums to such corporations which in turn
will buy in surplus commodities on a falling price market, be
forced to sell them at a still lower price and, in the end,
completely exhaust the board's capital.

     Last week the Great Question on many a farm throughout the
land was: Will there be federal relief for this year's crops?

     Wheat men, dubious of such relief this season, pricked up
their ears at a suggestion from North Dakota's Senator Nye that
the U.S. should buy up 50 or 100 million bushels of surplus
wheat, ship it to famished China as a gesture of goodwill.