Kings, Queens & Apples

While a U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals was putting a crimp in old AAA last week (see above), two Virginia farmers and an Idaho philosopher in the Senate were crippling at birth the bigger & better AAA conceived in the AAAmendments. Bee Control. Senator Carter Glass withered one amendment with ridicule. Among numerous commodities to be controlled and prorated, the spunky little Virginian last fortnight discovered queen bees. Bobbing up in the Senate, he rasped from the side of his mouth: "I note here that it is proposed to confer upon the Secretary of Agriculture the right to bring about birth control among bees. ... I have a good many bees. I do not know how many of them are queens; but I am just a little curious to know how I am expected to control the queen bees. . . ." "Permit me to say," solemnly interrupted Alabama's Senator Bankhead. "that this amendment was incorporated at the request of the bee shippers of this country. It is quite a large industry in some six or eight States, and there are now bee bargaining agreements under which the bee producers are operating and with which they are satisfied. Of course, the facetious remarks about birth control might as well be applied to fruits, or vegetables or anything else included in this bill."

"Yes," slashed back Senator Glass, "I think they might be. ... I am not facetious about it; I am serious about it. I do not want to be fined and put in jail because I just cannot control the actions of my queen bees." Last week the Senate relieved Apiarist Glass by voting queen bees out of the AAAmendments. "To the Garbage Can." His 10,000 acres of Virginia orchards make Senator Harry Flood Byrd the biggest apple-grower east of the Mississippi. As such he uprose last week to lead an attack on the proposal which would permit minimum price-fixing on certain foodstuffs. "As a producer of food," cried Pomologist Byrd. "I am firmly convinced that much more harm than good will result from the attempt to fix prices, those prices to be paid by the consumer. And especially is it entirely unworkable to attempt to fix prices for perishable foods, fruits and vegetables: because the value of these is determined by their condition, which varies from day to day. . . . "I am opposing this committee amendment because I believe the attempt of the Department of Agriculture to establish minimum prices ... is an absurdity to the nth degree. ... By the time all this red tape is unwound here in Washington these perishable foods and vegetables will be consigned to the garbage can. . . ."

The Senate voted 40-to-38 for price-fixing. But next day, a few wavering minds having apparently been shifted by the Circuit Court decision against AAA, the Senate reversed itself, clipped out the price-fixing amendment. 44-to-41.

"Egregious Fiction," Idaho's William Edgar Borah, turned 70 last month, has spent his life cultivating not bees or apples but constitutional philosophy. He was primed & cocked last week when the Senate arrived at consideration of the AAAmendment which would deny processors the right to sue for recovery of taxes, even though the Supreme Court should rule that they had been illegally collected by proclaiming AAA unconstitutional.

"The Government should be fair with the citizen," thundered Senator Borah. "There is an old fiction that the Government cannot be sued without its consent. I presume we will have to admit that that fiction is pretty well established in our jurisprudence. But it originated in the most egregious fiction that was ever established in any system, that is that the king can do no wrong, because at the time it was incorporated in the Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence the king did not do anything else but wrong, and the reason why the tribunals were denied to the citizens was because of the king's continuous wrongdoing. . . ."

Up piped Nebraska's Norris: "The reason for such a provision is not the ancient, barbaric rule that a king could do no wrong, but a modern rule of self-preservation. ... If there is no limit on the right of a citizen to sue the Government, I do not see how the Government can exist."

The colloquy was broken off when Senators Borah, Norris, George and others retired to work out a compromise. They returned to propose that recovery suits be allowed only when the processor could prove that he had not passed the tax on to consumers or back to farmers.

At his press conference next day President Roosevelt denounced "the new theory of Senator Borah," declared the Senator apparently wanted to deny to the U. S. Government the power which every other government has. But in the Senate, Georgia's George boldly declared: "When the Government runs its hand down into the pocket of the American taxpayer and says to him, 'You cannot have your day in court, it is dishonest. It is not only dishonest, it is undemocratic. And I will go further: No free government can last if once that policy has been adopted."

By a crushing 61-to-23 the Senate voted to let processors sue, provided they have not passed on their taxes. Clouded at once were prospects for Senate passage of the Administration bill barring damage suits by holders of gold-clause Government bonds passed by the House last week.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.