Plague of Plenty
Sir:
Your write-up of the farm problem in your June 19 issue was the fairest I have read out side the agricultural press .
CHESTER A. CLARK
Cedar Lake, Ind.
Sir:
Sorry to see such a biased and distorted picture of farming . . .
Farmers are talking, wondering, and seething with falling prices. Living is expensive. Taxes are high. They don't want handouts from politicians. Labor gets new demands. Freights go up. Building materials are jumping. New pests show up ...
Mark this--the Democrats with the Brannan Plan will win unless the Republicans come up with an understandable farm plan . . .
CARROLL D. BUSH
Grapeview, Wash.
Sir:
Maybe some farmers are "riding the crest of the most prosperous wave in farming history." But there are still two and one-half million migrant farm families who toil and starve so the rest of us may eat . . .
GRANT M. STOLTZFUS
Scottdale, Pa.
Sir:
. . . From my viewpoint, as a Technocrat,* the entire problem could best be summed up thus: for our physical needs we try to create an abundance--by using the technique of creating an artificial scarcity to keep prices up--so we may obtain enough money to purchase that abundance out of the scarcity. In short, we seek abundance and scarcity simultaneously.
We Technocrats may be permitted an amused chuckle while we observe the futile attempts to establish abundance and scarcity so they will co-exist . . .
When society is confronted with the choice of having a full belly and empty billfold or empty belly and full billfold, the full belly will be the choice . . .
G. W. MEEK
Corpus Christi, Tex.
Sir:
... In the framework of the price support program, the plight of the farm workers can be alleviated. It should be made a condition that any farmer availing himself of the federal price support must adopt a farming program which includes, among other things, all-year-round farming activities through the raising of overlapping crops or combination of crops . . . Under the price support, it should be a must relationship between the employing farmer and the hired hand that the latter . . . be covered by the social security compensation insurance.
Under this proposed setup of the federal price support, the unnecessary waste is ameliorated through the social salvation of a great segment of citizenry . . .
(THE REV.) D. F. GONZALO
Stockton, Calif.
Brash Birds
Sir:
Well, did the rubber garter snakes (TIME, June 12) keep the pigeons away from the West Palm Beach courthouse ledges? . . .
LAURENCE PERRINE
Dallas, Tex.
P:Only for a couple of days. Any suggestions?--ED.
No Regrets
Sir:
The Oxford Union motion "regretting the influence exercised by the U.S." [TIME, June 12) may easily give a misleading impression to readers not familiar with the circumstances. First, the Union is by no means representative of undergraduate opinion; it speaks only for its own members. Second, voting is affected as much by the merit of speeches as by the merit of motions; it is, after all, a debating club. Third, the oratory of Mr. Randolph Churchill, in marked contrast to that of his distinguished father, has always been a sure vote-loser amongst Oxford audiences. Neglect of these considerations caused widespread American misunderstanding of the 1933 "King and Country" [pacifist] motion. It would be a thousand pities if a similar misunderstanding flowed from this.
H. G. NICHOLAS
Exeter College, Oxford
Summa & Solutions
Sir:
A summa cum laude to TIME in content and objectivity of study on the Crisis in Colleges [June 19] . . .
SILAS SHULMAN
Cincinnati, Ohio
Sir:
... It seems to me that the article misses . . . one of the chief reasons for the financial predicament in which colleges and schools find themselves today, and that is that in a real sense every boy today in college, regardless of the financial background of his parents, is on a scholarship . . . For example, if the average cost per boy to the college today is $1,200 and a parent pays the top tuition asked by the college, which may be $600, then his son is receiving in a real sense a scholarship of $600 from the college . . .
If the colleges would put on a strong public relations program with their clientele in an effort to bring them, in a real sense, into a partnership with the school in the education of their boys, many of them would not only be willing to pay as much towards the actual cost as their finances would permit, but would also add to those amounts gifts which could be applied not only to mounting operating deficits, but to the tuitions of those less able to meet these costs . . .
JAMES I. WENDELL
Headmaster
The Hill School
Pottstown, Pa.
Sir:
Hadn't our college presidents better give sober thought to the sources of inflation which create their repeating financial crises? Not so many years ago their campuses were the spawning grounds of the theories now used as expedients for keeping a political party in office. Protected from worldly reality, our campuses have been slow to feel what fixed income individuals have long realized: inflation means creeping poverty ... It is just possible that [the colleges] are not too far advanced in their retrenchment to set up a joint institute for the study and promotion of the advantages of a stable dollar . . . With inflation stopped, college presidents could ignore pork barrel contracts and perpetual road shows for fund raising [and] could return to their offices to plan the orderly development of their institutions . . .
DUDLEY A. WILLIAMS
Providence, R.I.
Divine Relations
Sir:
I was indeed pleased and gratified to read the brief statement . . . denying the lie ... concerning Father Divine's and my domestic relations [TIME, June 12] ...
It is only right and justifiable that the press, as a servant of the people, should print the truth concerning all matters with which the public and the nation at large are concerned; for to publicize unfounded and malicious lies is to create Fascism, Naziism, Tojoism and Communism, jeopardizing the peace, freedom and security of the nation . . . Unless [such] treacherous propaganda ... is put an end to, the people of this nation will suffer the consequences with continued transportation disasters, floods, tornadoes and ultimate war which would undoubtedly mean the annihilation of civilization . . .
MRS. S. A. DIVINE
(MOTHER DIVINE)
Philadelphia, Pa.
A rare survivor of a half-forgotten movement which flourished in the early '303. Technocracy was founded by Howard .Scott, an engineering theorist, on the principle that under the present price system the machine is destroying man's chance to earn a living. By "functional control" of production and distribution--including the substitution of energy certificates for money--the Technocrats still claim they can wangle a comfortable living for everybody.
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