Hard Facts

In Manhattan last week the Food Administrator of World War I spoke grimly. Said Herbert Hoover: "We need to face the hard facts and secure a remedy. And at once. Food supply has become secondary only to military operations in determining the outcome of the war."

His hard facts: 1) last fall's slaughter of cows and sows makes it nonsense to "talk of furnishing meats and fat supplies" to 300 million additional starving people after the war; 2) Agriculture Secretary Claude Wickard's "admirable victory program of increased herds and production" announced a year ago was not fully met; 3) some two million men have been drained from the farm labor supply.

As remedies for labor shortages Elder Statesman Hoover called for the import of Mexicans, stopping the draft of farm workers, furloughs for farm-bred soldiers during harvests. Prices must be high enough to encourage production; vaguely, he added, retail ceilings should be abandoned in favor of fixed prices "as near the farm as possible."

In Washington Senator Harry Truman's War Investigating Committee drove ahead fast on the same front. Its hard-hitting report lambasted WPB's Office of Civilian Supply for cutting 1943 farm machine production to a mere 23% of the 1940 output. In a few hours, WPB upped the figure to 30% for the first quarter of 1943. But this was still below the 38% sought by the Agriculture Department.

Other action of the week:

> Food Boss Wickard announced that $200 million would be available for easy, one-year loans to enable farmers to increase production.

> Manpower Commissioner Paul McNutt issued a directive giving Claude Wickard all responsibility for recruiting and placing farm labor.

> The Administration agreed to ease draft deferments: Draft boards now may defer a farmer who tends eight cows or does a comparable amount of other farm work.

Some of this was sensible, as far as it went. But it left untouched one aspect of the farm & food crisis more conspicuous than any other. This year U.S. farmers plan to seed 52.5 million acres to wheat and 22.5 million acres to cotton. Thus they may add 73 million bushels of wheat, nine million bales of cotton to the stupendous carryovers of these two crops the U.S. has already. This senseless task will take uncounted numbers of men and machines. A man with the requisite political guts and power to force these acreages into the production of crops the U.S. so sorely needs could at one stroke end a national crisis and a national scandal. But the man was not in evidence last week.

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