Frozen Tongues

One day last week some 7,000,000 U. S. farmers came in from their chores, stomped their feet, dropped their mittens and sat down by their kitchen stoves to warm their frost-nipped hands. That day no kitchen stove in the U. S. could have thawed out the icy tongues of politicians in Washington. Politicians profess to love nothing better than a good political issue. The best political issue in a decade had just been tossed to them when Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts tore the AAAct into bits (TIME, Jan. 13). Yet the tongues of politicians were frozen stiff with fright--fright of what farmers might be saying by their kitchen stoves. As a matter of fact, farmers, still stunned by the Supreme Court's decision, had not recovered enough to say anything more important than: "Too bad."

In AAA offices some 6,000 employes, promptly cut off the payroll, sat down at their desks and wondered whether it would be constitutional for them to sharpen their pencils. No one gave them advice. There was peace along the Potomac, the peace that arises on those infrequent occasions when politicians admit that some thing surpasses their understanding. Not a Republican voice rose to chant triumphantly that Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. Not a Democratic voice promised that Humpty Dumpty would be put to gether again. "No news on that today," was all that the White House had to say on the most momentous of political questions.

During three days there was silence, broken only once when President Roosevelt announced that a law would be passed, as a matter of moral obligation, to appropriate money to pay farmers for AAA contracts already fulfilled. That would wipe the slate for the past but it gave no clue to the future.

Through Secretary Wallace went out a call to a carefully selected group of farm leaders to come to Washington to confer on what should be done for agriculture. The carefully selected group did not include such anti-New Dealers as Kansas' Dan Casement, who is a charter member of the Liberty League, or Iowa's Milo Reno, promoter of the "Farm Holiday." It did include Edward A. O'Neal, head of the Federal Farm Bureau Federation, a good ally of the New Deal, and representatives of the Farmers' Union (strong in the South) and of the National Grange which favors a revival of the ancient McNary-Haugen Plan.

No intention had Franklin Roosevelt of entrusting the politically vital drafting of his farm policy to even this restricted parliament of farmers. The job of the farm leaders would be to ratify the program worked out by his New Deal experts. Secretary Wallace, Chester Davis and their aides had just three days to draft such a program while the farm leaders were assembling. Each had a pet plan and the others spent their time pointing out the legal and economic flaws in his proposals.

By the end of the second day, though, something like a plan began to emerge. A significant paragraph in Justice Roberts' AAA decision had said it was illegal for Congress to contract with farmers to submit to government regulation, but that Congress could still appropriate money to be spent under specific conditions to achieve a constitutional end. Therefore, let the Government, without making contracts to regulate future production, pay farmers after performance for conserving the fertility of their soil. Conservation of a natural resource might be construed as in "the general Welfare" although the chief means of conservation might be withdrawing land from cultivation.

By the morning of the fourth day when the farm leaders arrived in Washington, the details of the plan and the legal devices to make it workable had still to be fleshed out, but the skeleton idea had taken form. The farm leaders marched in on Secretary Wallace. Edward O'Neal, Farm Bureau glad hander, spoofed them and slapped their backs to get them in good humor. After a brief session with Secretary Wallace, the farm leaders retired to draft a plan. Meanwhile, at a press conference President Roosevelt outlined the plan which the farm leaders were about to draft. Export subsidies were unthinkable, he explained, because, "We must avoid any national policy which will result in shipping our soil fertility to foreign nations." Conservation of the soil must be the keynote of U. S. agricultural policy.

Next day the conference of farm leaders recommended:

"That the Secretary of Agriculture be empowered by the Congress of the United States to provide for the rental and withdrawal from commercial crop production, at equitable rates, of such land as may be necessary to promote the conservation of soil fertility and to bring about a profitable balance of domestic production with the total effective demand at profitable prices."

Money for the new plan would simply be paid out of the Treasury. Whence it would come was a detail. The choice of new taxes under any name would be merely a matter of political convenience. Only thing agreed was that some $500,000,000 a year, about the same as under AAA, would be economically and politically desirable.

Significance. Not until the new "AAA" is drafted in the form of a bill will the New Deal know whether it is more than a stopgap, legally and economically. When that is known and when the public has had occasion to register its reaction there will still be time for Franklin Roosevelt to decide whether there will be any political advantage in advocating a Constitutional Amendment to short circuit Supreme Court interference with his economic plans. A new farm program had been conceived, but the politics of the farm issue was little further advanced than it had been on the afternoon of Jan. 6 when the Supreme Court pushed Humpty Dumpty off the wall.

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