Something for Nothing

From the book shelves which line the walls of his chamber in the new Supreme Court Building, Associate Justice Willis Van Devanter last week flipped out a volume, leafed it carefully. With his facts straight, he faced a newshawk, declared:

"I was made executor of the estate and some time later several checks were sent me. . . . I had no choice. I signed the checks and turned them into the estate. At any rate, the sum was small. I think those two checks which were returned represented a fourth of the sum. . . . While it is true that, ultimately, I might benefit when the estate is settled, I had no choice as executor. After the act was invalidated, however, I felt that, since I held against the law, the checks should be returned."

The estate of which Justice Van Devanter was executor was that of his late wife. The checks he received were AAA benefits for not growing wheat on two small tracts in Montana which had belonged to Mrs. Van Devanter. The act which Justice Van Devanter helped to annihilate last January was the AAA. The two checks he thereupon returned to the Treasury were for $45.35 and $14.97.

This disclosure of judicial integrity was the result of a clever bit of sleuthing by Senator Arthur Vandenberg. Last month that Michigan Republican began to display an inordinate curiosity about AAA's big beneficiaries. Who, he asked, was the cotton grower who received $168,000, the hog-raiser who received $219,825, the Puerto Rican sugar producer who received $961,064? In the Senate he offered a resolution requiring the Department of Agriculture to furnish a complete list of those ''farmers" who had received $10,000 or more in AAA benefits.

Senator Vandenberg's Republican brand of curiosity greatly dismayed Secretary of Agriculture Wallace. To prepare such a list, he explained, would take much time, much money. Besides, the list might induce gangsters to invade the farm. He earnestly wondered if the farmer's daughter would then be safe. This thought did not appear so frightening to Senator Vandenberg. Snorted he: "If the farmer who made that $298.000 for not planting so many thousands of acres of cotton has a daughter, she must be a girl without a soul. That farmer was a corporation." Republican Chairman Henry Prather Fletcher chimed in: "It is unbecoming to the Secretary of Agriculture to behave and talk as though he were playing a low comedy role in vaudeville." Promptly Secretary Wallace explained in his Iowa drawl that he had said the "farmer's dollar," not the "farmer's daughter."

As the Senate began to press forward with the Vandenberg resolution to get the facts & figures on AAA's ghost. Secretary Wallace released a scattering of information on large benefit payments. Items:

Cotton: 46 payments over $10,000 in 1933; biggest, $84.000, to an Arkansas corporation. In 1934 at least two corporations received over $100,000.

Wheat: Seven payments in the year 1934-35 over $10,000; biggest, $78,634, to a California company.

Hogs: 19 payments over $10,000 in 1934; biggest, $157,000, to a California corporation.

Tobacco: Five payments over $15,000 in 1934; biggest. $41,454, to a Florida firm.

Rice: 19 payments over $25,000 in 1935; biggest, $59,286, to a Louisiana company.

Sugar: 165 payments over $10,000; biggest, $1,067,665, to a Florida firm.

To dispel the impression that a few had cashed in on AAA to the exclusion of the many, Secretary Wallace explained: "It is easy to concentrate attention on these big payments, but they are not representative. . . . For example, the 46 cotton payments of more than $10,000 in 1933 totaled less than 1% of the $112,700,000 which went to cotton growers that year. But considerably more than one-fourth of the $112,700,000 was paid to growers who received less than $100. . . .

"The fact that some payments are much larger than others was directly and entirely due to the extent to which control of farm and producing facilities had fallen into the hands of corporations, absentee owners and large operators. . . . The adjustment programs which were largely designed to preserve the family-sized farm as an American institution have, I am glad to say, halted this alarming development."

If Secretary Wallace thought he had slaked the Senate's curiosity with this incomplete and anonymous information, he was badly mistaken. The Senate Agriculture Committee embraced the Vandenberg resolution almost as if it had been an Administration measure, prepared to whip it through the Senate at the first opportunity.

Meanwhile the Press had taken up the AAA scent, was sniffing out the real names of AAA beneficiaries. Aggressive young Stanley Chipman of the Providence Journal revealed that Delta & Pine Land Co. of Mississippi, British-controlled and one of the largest plantations in the U. S., had received $177,200 in 1933 and 1934, the fourth largest AAA cotton payment. Of the last benefit payment tenants and sharecroppers received 18%. Oscar Johnston is the company's $27,000-a-year president. Oscar Johnston is also the manager of AAA's cotton pool. Senator Vandenberg smiled: "The question immediately arises as to whether this is a proper practice."

Another name was that of Montana's Thomas Donald Campbell, for years called "the world's largest wheat farmer." From the Indians Farmer Campbell rented some 16,500 acres of land at prices said to range from 50-c- to $1.50 an acre. For not growing wheat on some of these acres, Farmer Campbell received $50,000 in 1933 and 1934. His average AAA yield per wheat-less acre was $7.

Third name was that of Allan Hoover, younger son of Herbert Hoover. Son Allan had received AAA benefit payments, one of $4,800 for his interest in a Bakersfield, Calif, ranch, another of $2.50 on his shares of stock in another ranch nearby. He quickly denied, however, that he had received any real profit from these checks: "I was complying with the law, and tickets for the sale of cotton could not be issued unless the ranch owners signed the agreement. Although the owners did receive this AAA payment, they sustained a loss of $25,000 as the result of unconstitutional acts under the AAA affecting other crops."

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