Word-to Mouths

Franklin Roosevelt took nearly a month of preparation and a full 10,000 words--his longest message ever--to propose his food policy to Congress. He had reason for the work and the words: he knew that to please one potent force in the U.S.--the farmer--he must displease another potent sector--the consumer. His characteristic ambition: to please both. His solution: more farm subsidies.

A Little Opium. Farm Congressmen were demanding higher crop prices. They knew that, if the lid were off, farmers could easily sell all they grew, at bonanza prices. Maybe a "little inflation" would be a good thing, some argued.

Answered the President: a "little inflation" is like a little opium: soon you want more, then you have the habit. If food prices soared, labor would bolt through the Little Steel formula; presently all prices--including what the farmer wanted to buy--would get out of hand.

Then Franklin Roosevelt gingerly mentioned subsidies, a word which rings wild bells in the heads of farm-bloc Congressmen. With subsidies, argued the President, farmers could still get good prices; the Government could still hold the line for consumers. The Administration has pledged that farm prices would be maintained for two years after the war; and the President pointed out that farmers were the only section of the nation to be assured that, come peace, the bottom would not fall out.

Home Plate. The President then about-faced and addressed consumers. Despite the military and overseas drains on food, three-fourths of U.S. food production remains at home, he said. And since crops-and-cattle have increased more than 30% since 1935-39, there is roughly as much food for U.S. tables as before the war. But now millions of previously underfed citizens are consuming more.

What about the future? The ever-expanding Army, which got 7 1/2% of U.S. food in 1942, would need 14% in 1943; Lend-Lease would need more. But War Food Administration was asking 16 million more acres in crops than in 1943. And any warning of meat famine was "loose talk."

If the President got his subsidies, he stood ready to promise the U.S. all the food it needed, though not all it wanted.

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