Caught Short

At last Claude Wickard was scared. To the Senate Agriculture Subcommittee last week the long-sanguine food czar glumly admitted:

"The American people have been caught short on food. The food situation is going to become very critical so far as production is concerned, first because of the inability to get the labor we ought to have, and second because of inability to get the farm machinery we ought to have."

The amiable Agriculture Secretary spoke truly--but too late. Everywhere the people could see that a year's indecision and vacillation had finally caught up with Claude Wickard and the Administration. Civilians were told they could have only half the amount of canned goods they ate last year. Black meat markets flourished. Butter stocks were at the lowest point in 18 years. Even Claude Wickard finally had to recognize that the land of plenty had become a land of scarcity.

On Tuesday he announced that even wheat (of which there were 1,613 million bushels on hand last fall), is no longer superabundant, declared the sky the limit on wheat growing this year, removed all penalties from wheat grown in 1942 in excess of AAA quotas.

State Agriculture Commissioners piled up the gloom. Samples: > New Hampshire: Production will be off generally 5% to 12% from 1942; the quota for potatoes was set at 40% over 1942, a year whose halcyon weather conditions will probably not be repeated this year.

>Indiana: Even with normal weather, corn will be off 5%-10%; soybeans 15%; milk 2%-5%. More beef animals will be sold, but at weights below 1942. > Iowa: The State has an alltime record number of livestock on farms, but grains will be off 5%-10%.

> North Carolina: Irish potatoes off 20%, cabbage 50%, green peas 35%. > Arizona: Long-staple cotton off 30%, alfalfa 20%.

Last week, up spoke Louis Bromfield, novelist and Ohio farmer:

"We are witnessing an extraordinary spectacle--that of the richest nation in the world facing a catastrophic food shortage. . . . This senseless calamity, with all its grave repercussions upon the war effort and the future of the world, is happening in a country which is not only agriculturally one of the richest areas on the earth's surface, but normally one of the best equipped with modern machinery. . . . Very nearly every possible handicap has been placed on the production of more food and even of maintaining the normal supply.

"The elements which have brought about this crisis are simple, 1) The situation was far more grave than the public has been allowed to know. 2) The Secretary of Agriculture, who was given charge of the food problem, has proved himself incompetent. . . ."

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