53^ AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



ing tax of from thirty to forty cents a bushel on all wheat milled for 

 domestic consumption; and there would be issued to farmers complying 

 with the A.A.A. wheat program tax certificates "to cover the proportion 

 of their wheat marketing quota which, on the average, is consumed in the 

 United States." Certificates would not be issued to farmers not complying 

 with the program. 



According to this plan, the flour millers would have no place to buy 

 tax certificates except from the wheat farmers who complied with the 

 program. The cooperating farmer would have certificates to cover his 

 share of the domestically consumed portion of the crop. "That is, if a 

 farmer had an acreage allotment of 100 acres and a normal acreage pro- 

 duction of ten bushels per acre, and the domestically consumed share was 

 put at 60 per cent of the total, he would get tax certificates on 60 per cent 

 of 1,000 bushels, or 600 bushels." 



This would make up the parity payment of the farmer, the major part, 

 at least, of the difference between the current and the parity price. It would 

 also act as a form of crop insurance, because in the event of complete or 

 partial crop failure, the farmer would have the sale of his full quota of 

 certificates as a source of income. The certificates would take the place of 

 parity payments and the sum collected by the cooperating farmer would 

 be had in addition to payments for soil conservation. 



The farmer who failed to comply with the program would be forced 

 to sell at the world price for export, or else buy tax certificates for all 

 wheat sold on the domestic market, which, in turn, would furnish a 

 strong incentive to cooperate with the program. 



The plan was encouraged in Congress in opposition to the proposals for 

 increases of $250,000,000 or more over the House appropriations for parity 

 payments on the ground that the parity payments were piling up a big 

 deficit and increasing the public debt. Wallace and other leaders had con- 

 tended all along that the farmers would never have any assurance of 

 permanence to their program until they recovered the continuous source 

 of revenue which was lost to them by the adverse court decision in the 

 Hoosac Mills case in 1936. The processing taxes had been yielding 



91 



$500,000,000 or more a year. 

 Very late in 1939 the income-certificate plan ran into opposition in 



91. Pioneer Press, April 22, 1939. 



