796 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



The whole program seems oiip of tearing down instead of building 

 up. The advantage the American farmer has had over other farmers 

 of the world was in farming with his head as well as with his hands. 

 He has cut down his cost of production by use of high-speed machinery. 

 Corn is more and more planted four rows at a time. Land is plowed 

 with a four- or five-bottom plow. More and more farmers are coming 

 to install corn driers so they can not only save the bydrid corn of big 

 yields, but by picking it when it has only 28 to 30 percent moisture, 

 in September or early October, they can still have time to plant a 

 cover crop on the sides of their hills and prevent soil erosion. 



These things, this farming with the head as well as the hands, is 

 typically American. It did not, however, originate in the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture. It originated in the minds of American farmers 

 who are trying to make their farms successful enough to compete 

 against peasant labor and cheap land in other countries. 



But it can be successful only if the unit of operation is large enough 

 to make purchase of the expensive machinery necessary a paying 

 proposition. We produce moie agricultural products per person 

 employed on farms than any other nation of the world. We feed more 

 cattle and raise more pigs per man employed than anywhere else on the 

 globe. 



But the Brannan plan would change all this. It would cut down 

 the size of the farm permitted to participate in the subsidy. And 

 it would so drive the prices down that without the subsidy even the 

 most efficient producers would be driven to bankruptcy. It is the 

 people who add and multiply that increase production. Mr. Brannan 

 seems only able to divide and subtract. 



His plan would soon bring a meat famine because it would drive out 

 of business the commercial feeders of livestock. These are the men 

 who have livestock on the market every month and many of them every 

 week of the year. Without them the consumers would have a big 

 supply of grass cattle in the late summer and fall months. Then they 

 would have a supply of fed cattle in the late winter months. But 

 this program would not, as it was first announced, permit the farmer 

 to operate in a manner large enough that he could employ someone to 

 to operate and plow the fields while he fed the livestock. He would 

 be compelled to feed only in the winter months when he could not be 

 in the fields. This program would drive the Nation to a diet of parched 

 corn and boiled hay. 



Instead of stabilizing prices, it seems inevitable that his program 

 would disrupt prices tremendously because the amount that could 

 be produced would be left entirely to the whim of one man. It would 

 be up to that one man to determine how much might be produced, 

 what farmers must do to be "in compliance" with the rules and regula- 

 tions that he would prescribe — and might change overnight. And 

 it would be- up to him to determine the penalties to be assessed against 

 those who ask only to be left the freedom that their ancestors fled to 

 this country to get — the freedom to produce goods that other people 

 want and will pay for. 



Never in all history has there ever been a man big enough to 

 determine just how much goods was to be produced by all of the 

 people and how much they were to receive for it. Many have tried. 

 The results have been consistently bad. They might look good for a 

 time. They might have a black rust scourge like this Nation had in 



