65

65-c- Wheat; 12-c- Cotton

The steady hum of old harvesters and new combines sounded last week across golden-brown fields of Kansas, greatest of wheat states. Every other human activity was subordinated to getting in the wheat crop. But there was no joy in the harvest. Drought and a late cold snap had cut to below normal what was planted last year as a record-breaking crop. Wheat was selling for less than it had been in 16 years. The average wagon price in Kansas last week was 65-c- per bu.*

The new combine, that marvel of agricultural machinery which cuts and threshes the grain in one operation, reduced this year's field employment to such a point that hands were being paid $3 or less per day. As the farmer brought in his wheat, he was torn between his habit of immediate cash sale, regardless of price, and the Federal Farm Board's new doctrine of holding for a rising market. Many a planter, with his storage bins overflowing, piled grain on the ground. Railroads, anticipating that the husbandman finally would yield to habit, lined their sidings throughout the wheat belt with empty freight cars to carry the grain to terminal markets. Statisticians declared Kansas' wheat crop value this year would be $80,000,000. compared to $137,000,000 last year.

Because of the depressed wheat price-- the Chicago price dropped to 87-c- per bu. last week, compared with $1.13 last year --all eyes were turned to the Federal Farm Board for help. Governor Clyde Martin Reed of Kansas, alarmed, telegraphed Federal Farm Board Chairman Legge as follows:

"Kansas is facing a catastrophe. . . . Thousands of wheat growers are facing disaster because of the necessity to part with their crop at a price below the cost of production. . . . It is common report that the Board now owns 50,000,000 bushels of wheat but the millers and grain trade are uncertain when this wheat may come back on the market so that it is an ever present factor in bearing down the current price.

"I believe the Board could well afford to purchase 25,000,000 bushels additional or more if necessary at current market prices and then announce that the whole amount would be withheld from the mar ket for a definite period of time."

But Chairman Legge refused to admit that a wheat emergency existed, indicated he would not follow Governor Reed's suggestion. That he was terribly disappointed at the failure of his Board to hold up grain prices at the first harvest test was plain to all who saw him. Later in the week in a radio address he turned the subject from the Board to the farmers' organizations, declared that only by consolidating all their granges and bureaus and clubs and societies could husbandmen expect to help themselves to better prices. Said he: "With farmers organized the adjustment of production and marketing would be comparatively easy. . . . The difficulty comes in getting producers to cooperate because there is still a great difference of opinion as to just how to organize farmers."

Though the Farm Board would buy no more wheat -- it is already about $15,000,000 in the red on its current holdings -- George Sparks Milnor, president of Grain Stabilization Corp., the Board's market agency, did declare: "The grain trade need have no apprehension of competition from wheat held by Grain Stabilization Corp. during the coming months when farmers will be moving the 1930 crop to market, unless in the meantime prices rise to the level at which purchases were made [$1.15 to $1.18]. In no event will this 1929 stabilization wheat be thrown on the market in a way to depress prices."

Cotton. Meanwhile the cotton crop was in no better position than wheat. The spot price in southern markets last week was down to 12-c- per lb., 33 1/8% under last year's price level. The Farm Board's new Cotton Stabilization Corp., similar to grain stabilization, prepared to take over one million bales of the 1929 surplus held by cooperatives for loans, and thereby commence its market career with an initial loss of $15,000,000 to clear the way for the 1930 crop. Last week the first bale of the new crop reached the New Orleans exchange through the American Cotton Cooperative from Starr county, Texas.

To add to the Farm Board's other troubles a whispering campaign was going through the cotton trade, among the same Southerners who in 1928 rejected Alfred Emanuel Smith because of his religion, to the effect that Chairman Legge and Carl Williams, the cotton member of the Farm Board, were Roman Catholics; that the new Cotton Stabilization Corp. was under Catholic influence and that only members of that faith were being chosen as the corporation's local agents in Southern cotton markets.*

This story, baseless and stupid though it might be, was subtly undermining the prestige and influence of the Farm Board in the cotton belt.

* Kansas farmers declare the cost of producing a bushel of wheat is about 80-c- though Wheat Farming Corp. contends it can raise wheat for 24-c-.

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