The Bloc at Work

There are two gentlemen in Congress whose importance increased by leaps and bounds last week. One is a journalist with a bloc. The other is a lawyer with a bloc. In each case the bloc is a farm bloc. One of them is Senator Arthur Capper of Kansas; the other is Representative L. J. Dickinson of Iowa.

Mr. Capper's senior and colleague is Charles Curtis, the Republican leader, and although as the junior Senator from Kansas Mr. Capper occupies no such important post, his importance has swelled in the political firmament as the resentment of corn farmers in the West (TIME, Jan. 4, 11) has been more and more clearly disclosed at the Capital during the last few days.

Mr. Capper is 60, slender, affects no polish of dress or manner, neither is he an aggressive type. He looks "like a country editor, grown into large estate"--and he is. He began life by learning typesetting on a small Kansas newspaper; he graduated into editorial work, became a reporter, city editor, Washington correspondent, publisher. He owns nine farm papers, with a combined weekly circulation of 1,500,000. He owns the Topeka Daily Capital, on which he began as a typesetter, besides another daily in Kansas City, a political weekly with a circulation of 600,000, and a "home" monthly with 1,250,000 circulation. In fact, he stands in the front rank as a successful publisher. How comes it that he is leader of the farm bloc?

The answer is that his whole life has been spent in winning the confidence of the average man. He has the reputation of knowing more about what the farmer really wants than any one else in Congress. It is said that he receives more personal mail than any other member of Congress, and reads and answers every letter. Among the things he started were Calf Clubs and Pig Clubs. He put up money secured only by the personal notes of boys and girls. At the end of a year, the animals were sold and the youngsters pocketed a profit.* His success in reading the farmers' minds is attested by his political record. He failed in 1912 to be elected Governor of Kansas in the three-cornered fight of that year, but he was elected in 1914 and in 1916. In 1918 he was elected Senator by a large majority, and reelected in 1924.

He has declared himself in favor of a corporation to take care of the farm surplus. The importance of his position lies in the fact that he is leader of the farm bloc in the Senate. The Senate with its loose organization is a much better field of operation for the farm bloc than is the House. Whatever legislation the junior Senator from Kansas espouses is likely not only to have the firm support of the farmer, but to have a good chance of enactment provided the Presidential veto does not intervene. At any rate as leader of the Senate farm bloc, Mr. Capper has as much power to disturb the even temper of that body's procedure as Mr. Curtis, his colleague, the majority leader, has to carry out the Administration's policies.

Representative Dickinson, whose place in the farm bloc in the House is analogous to that of Mr. Capper in the Senate, is a man of 52, bred a lawyer. Last week he took the initiative for the farm bloc by introducing a relief measure in the House. It is not yet certain that the farmers of the West will line up behind his bill, but he gained an important point as regards the prospects of its passage by getting the Administration's qualified approval of his proposal. Secretary Jardine indicated that he disapproved of some features of the bill, but Mr. Dickinson declared he was confident that a few minor amendments would gain the Secretary's approval for the bill.

The Dickinson Bill creates two boards: a Federal Farm Advisory Council, composed of representatives of farm organizations, and a Federal Farm Board in the Department of Agriculture, of which the Secretary of Agriculture would be a member. The Farm Board would determine when there would be an export surplus in any of several crops and would enter into agreement with the farmers' co-operative marketing associations to buy the surplus at domestic prices and sell it abroad at foreign prices. The cooperative marketing associations would be reimbursed for losses on sales abroad from a fund accumulated by taking a part of the producers' returns from sales of their crops as an "equalizing fee."

There are objections to the plan, such as that the loss on the surplus might grow so large that it would eat up all the profit on the grain sold in this country; but if a workable plan for putting it into effect can be devised, the foregoing example shows that it will yield at least temporary relief.

One other farm relief plan was proposed in a bill before Congress last week. Senator McKinley of Illinois was the proposer. He suggested direct loans to farmers from Federal Farm Loan Banks on grain stored, the loans to be up to 75% of its value. By this means farmers in years of big crops could store their grain until there were smaller crops and higher prices. If in the next year there were higher prices the farmers would be gainers, but if prices should go down instead of up, the farmers would lose heavily.

*One of Mr. Capper's sidelines is a Constitutional Amendment for uniform national marriage and divorce laws, providing a two weeks' period after application before a marriage can take place--to prevent hasty marriages and decrease divorces--and divorce for any one of five causes: adultery, cruelty, abandonment, incurable insanity and felony.