848 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



Our fundamental objection to the Brannan proposals is that they 

 belong not in the free society of contract but in the slave society of 

 status and compulsion. Their adoption would go a long way toward 

 transforming the American society from the one into the other. 



As economics, and considered as economics only, the whole ideology 

 of price supports and subsidies is a fraud upon everybod}^ concerned. 

 The Brannan plan gives to the consumer the illusion of low prices — 

 but the illusion only. Everybody knows that the subsidies to be paid 

 to farmers would come out of general taxation. Some of it would come 

 from the farmers themselves, and to that extent they are among the 

 deceived. But most of it would come from nonagricultural con- 

 sumers, and the prices they would actually pay, counting in the extra 

 tax burden, would be greater than the law of supply and demand 

 would fix both by the amount of subsidies paid the farmers and the 

 political brokerage which is sometimes called the cost of adminis- 

 tration. 



By selecting one particular economic and political interest for this 

 favoritism, such legislation, instead of balancing the whole economy, 

 will throw the total economy out of balance, with ruinous effects for 

 everyone. For only an economy which governs its free activity by 

 the immutable law of supply and demand can long endure. That law 

 cannot be repealed by any Congress. It exists in the nature of all 

 economic life. It is the prime cause of efficiency, of production for 

 real use in response to real demand (which alone can result in real 

 profits), and it operates to promote the general welfare by the 

 elimination of economic services and products which consumers do 

 not desire. It would be better to play football with an atom bomb 

 than with the law of supply and demand. For a while, politicians 

 may think they are getting away with kicking the law around, but 

 eventually it explodes in their face. The pity is, that when it explodes 

 not merely the players but the spectators of this madness — ^the public — 

 will be economically vaporized along with the team. That it has not 

 yet happened in all its fury is no reason to imagine that it will not 

 happen. The longer it is delayed, and the more the law is tampered 

 with, the greater the economic and social disaster will be. 



The subsidies under the Brannan plan are to be paid only to the 

 ''little producers." The 2 percent of "big" producers who account 

 for 25 percent of agricultural production are to be left out. Surely 

 it does not require a great brain to see what the result of this will be, 

 and of what it is intended to be. The 2 percent who supply 25 percent 

 of the crops will be forced out of business. Then the little fellows 

 will be shackled to the wheel, no matter whether they realize what is 

 happening to them, and will be serfs of the State, dependent for their 

 very existence upon Mr. Brannan and the future Mr. Brannans who 

 will rule from their royal city of Washington. 



That this program would cost billions is a truism., but it is almost 

 irrelevant in view of the largei- issues at stake. Representatives from 

 farm States now have the choice of becoming mere crumb-gathering 

 political lackeys, or of rising above all low, prudential considerations 

 into the pure, clean air of patriotic statesmanship. If they are 

 content to be the former they will vote for the bill and spend the 

 rest of their lives with their conscience, living on the crumbs that fall 

 from their masters' table. If they will be the latter — and the choice 

 is solemnly individual in the presence of God — they will be willing 

 to fight the good fight even if it means personal oblivion. 



