Signed, But Not Read

Senator Hubert Humphrey, a careful reader of magazines, was incensed again. Standing in the Senate chamber one afternoon last week, he brandished a copy of the December Harper's, then read excerpts from an article entitled "The Country Slickers Take Us Again." The article, a blast at farm subsidies, was enough to make any farm-belt Senator (such as Minnesota's Humphrey) writhe in anguish. Excerpts:

P:"Our pampered tyrant, the American farmer, is about to get his boots licked again by both political parties . . . the Democrats will set up a pious, baritone moan about the wretched plight of American agriculture. They will pass a farm-relief bill, loaded till its axles creak with rigid price supports, loans, 'conservation' payments, and other shabbily disguised subsidies. Then they will pray for the President to veto it."

P: "The record of recent elections indicates that the farmer is generally eager to sell his vote to the highest bidder, and that city people are too indifferent (or benumbed) to resent this legalized corruption, even when the bribe is lifted right out of their own pockets."

It was not so much the article* that raised Humphrey's hackles, as it was a brief endorsement of it in the letters-to-the-editor column of the February issue of the magazine. "I have read the article," the letter said, ". . . with a great deal of interest. It is excellent." The letter was signed by Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson. "This man," shouted Hubert Humphrey, "should be fired-now-this afternoon!" Immediately a mooing chorus of farm-bloc Senators raised their protests to the glass roof of the chamber. Republican Senators Milton Young of North Dakota and Francis Case of South Dakota clamored to join Humphrey's attack. Later, even calm old Walter George thought that Secretary Benson had "lost his usefulness."

The fracas in the Senate quickly ricocheted to the Agriculture Department, 14 blocks away. There, after five hours of checking the facts, Benson's staff sheepishly invited the press in. The Secretary was away in the country, but an aide read a statement from him. He had not read the article, nor had he signed or even seen the letter. The letter had been written in his office as a routine thank-you note for an advance page proof of the article, and signed with Benson's name by an assistant who is authorized to handle run-of-the-mill mail. "But," said Benson, "as Secretary of Agriculture, I must take the responsibility for this, and I so do. Of course, the article as .reported to me by my staff does not in the slightest reflect my views. We pulled a boner on this one. I'm sorry."

*Author of the article was Harper's Editor in Chief John Fischer, who was a zealous young Agriculture Department economist during the Roosevelt Administration, was a hot Stevenson-for-President man in 1952.

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