Hazy How

To Memphis last week trooped cotton farmers. To Chicago on the same day trooped corn & wheat farmers. Their object was to find out just what AAA was going to make them do to share in the $400,000,000 to $500,000,000 annual bounty under the new Soil Conservation Act. To Memphis went Secretary of Agriculture Wallace, to Chicago Assistant Secretary Milburn Lincoln Wilson, to explain things: The Government meant to take 30,000,000 out of 300,000,000 acres normally devoted to soil-depleting crops (cotton, corn, wheat) and put them into soil-conserving crops (alfalfa, soya beans). Farmers would probably be paid 75-c- to $1 an acre for planting soil-conserving crops, a larger fee for land changed over from soil-depleting crops. There would be no government contracts.

But what, grumbled farmers, did each man have to do on his own farm in order to get his money? Secretary Wallace told them to go home, form committees, figure it out for themselves. Surprised but dutiful, the farmers went into session to try to work out a program that would fit the Government's deliberately hazy ideas.

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