Sick Giant

Nothing seemed able last week to stimulate the U. S. wheat market out of its most serious slough since 1921. Like a sick giant, it lay in the pit, neglected, inert, gasping to keep above the $1-per-bushel mark. Railroads east and west had cut wheat and flour export freight rates to help move the largest surplus in ten years (TIME, May 13). Hard-headed railroad executives were skeptical of the assistance they were giving. They saw that foreign demand must exist to move export wheat, and that no such demand existed. The fact remained that the world had as much wheat as it wanted, with more than it wanted in prospect come next harvesttime.

Senate Bill. The Senate's passage of the Farm Relief Bill containing the Export Debenture Plan so heartily disapproved by President Hoover, did nothing to revive the wheat market. Without dramatics, the Senate passed the bill by a vote of 54 to 33. Nine Senators (eight Republicans, one Democrat) who had previously voted against the Debenture Plan, switched to final support of the Bill on the ground that they must vote for some kind of Farm Legislation, good or bad. The measure did not get a single Republican vote east of Michigan.

G. O. Peace. Just before the vote the dove of peace again settled gently upon the Republican side of the chamber. Senator Fess of Ohio had characterized as "pseudo-Republicans" his party colleagues who had not supported President Hoover against the Debenture. Senator Brookhart of Iowa retorted:

"Not having had much school training, I got down my copy of the International Dictionary to find out what this 'pseudo' business means. ... I find that 'pseudo' is a Greek word ... as a prefix in English signifying 'false, counterfeit, pretended, spurious.' ... It ruffled my feathers a good deal at first ... so I looked back in the dictionary and found that the word has a second meaning: 'In Lobachevskian geometry an analog of the corresponding term in Euclidean geometry as 'pseudo-form.' Of course, I do not have the slightest idea what all that means. But probably that is what the Senator from Ohio intended to apply to me, and so I do not feel mad about him at all." Everybody laughed.

Senator Fess rose to say that he had taken the word from an earlier speech by California's Senator Johnson. Though a college professor, he confessed that he did not have the "dictionary definition'' before him when he tagged Republican Progressives with the word.

House Reception. Great was the uncertainty in the House as to the proper method of receiving the Senate's Farm Bill. Many a Republican leader felt that the Debenture Plan affected revenue, and therefore invaded the House's constitutional prerogative to initiate this kind of legislation. But the Farm issue temporarily overtopped the Constitution. Chairman Snell of the House Rules Committee put it thus: "If we should start some Constitutional argument here, the people wouldn't understand and we couldn't make them understand. They want Farm Relief and they want it at once." Chairman Snell therefore prepared a rule to receive the Farm Bill from the Senate and send it to conference with this proviso: "In the opinion of the House there is a question as to whether 'the Senate's Debenture Plan' contravenes ... the Constitution and is an infringement on the rights and privileges of the House. The action of the House in this instance shall not be deemed to be a precedent." The House agreed, 249 to 119. The Democrats tried vainly to make the vote an oblique test of strength on the Debenture Plan.

Conference. Farm Relief thereupon disappeared into the subterranean chambers of the Capitol where five Senators and five Representatives began to wrestle with their disagreements. Of the Senate conferees, three had opposed the Debenture Plan, two had favored it. All five of the House conferees opposed it. Its extirpation seemed certain.