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Show kAI XW DREW PEARSON ' Washington, D. C. FARM LAND BOOM Secretary of Agriculture Wickard will soon trot up to Capitol Hill with a proposed bill in his pocket to put an end to the farm land boom. He is keenly worried about speculation in farm properties, has made a couple cou-ple of speeches on that subject, but has not disclosed the full extent of the penalties he will propose to stop land speculation. His bill carries a tax of 90 per cent on profits from the sale of farms held less than two years. In other words, if a farm is bought and then sold again in a few months, the deal is obviously for speculation, not for farm production, and the profit would be practically confiscat-' confiscat-' ed by the proposed tax. ! Farm sales are so heavy that, if i the present trend continues, they ! will surpass those of 1919-20, which was a record year. Iowa farm land, for example, is bringing $225 an acre. Wickard has evidence indicating 1 that the men engaged in this specu-! specu-! lative buying are not farmers, and most of them are not even residents ! of farm areas. They are investment houses and insurance companies, who have money lying around loose and think they can make a killing, ! as they did in World War I. ' The record of their speculation in that period is still written black on the pages of farm history. It is seen every time AAA makes benefit payments, pay-ments, for. the largest checks in many states go, not to individual farmers, but to insurance companies and banks which have bought land or taken it over by foreclosing mortgages. Wickard is prepared for opposition opposi-tion to- his bill. However, the opposition oppo-sition will come, not from farm elements, ele-ments, but from the speculators, and also from Wall street brokers who fear that the next move might be a capital-gains tax on stock-market operations. op-erations. ELK HILLS BOILS Latest developments in the Elk Hills oil controversy are known only to those who can see the inner workings work-ings of the cabinet. Attorney General Biddle was expected ex-pected to denounce the navy's contract con-tract with Standard Oil of California as illegal. The reason he didn't is that two cabinet colleaguesgot next to him and changed his tune. Experts in the justice department have declared the contract definitely definite-ly illegal, and passed their findings along to Biddle. Biddle, in turn, was expected to tell the house naval affairs af-fairs committee the same thing, with the result that congress would undoubtedly un-doubtedly recommend condemna--1 tion. Thus, Standard of California would relinquish all the property to the government. But when Biddle appeared before the committee, he pulled his punches. Instead of declaring the contract illegal, he merely stated that he had "grave doubts" about it. The committee was expecting a forthright statement. Even its chairman, Congressman Vinson of Georgia, who is very close to navy officials, privately favors condemnation. condemna-tion. Secret of what happened is this. Two cabinet colleagues got hold of Biddle's coattails. One was Secretary Secre-tary of the Navy Knox, who was responsible for the contract in the first place; the other was Harold Ickes, whose Petroleum administration administra-tion is headed by a Standard Oil of California executive. The fight is not over. Look for fireworks in public hearings before the committee next month. SUBSIDY ISSUE POSTPONED The 9-8 vote by which the Bank-head Bank-head anti-subsidy bill was defeated in the senate banking and currency committee came as a surprise to insiders. in-siders. When they first took it up behind closed doors, most members of the committee figured that the bill would be reported out favorably and that Koosevelt would suffer a resounding defeat on subsidies. As it turned out, the deciding vote for subsidies was cast by Republican Senator Joseph Jo-seph Ball of Minnesota, whom Bank-head Bank-head supporters considered in their anti-subsidy camp. Terrific pressure had been exerted on Ball by some of the big dairy interests in .his state. However, the young Minnesotan is a fearless statesman who believes in putting the interests of the nation and of the majority of the people over special or state interests. He not only voted against the inflationary Bankhead bill, but also against the Taft compromise com-promise which was licked by a lopsided lop-sided vote. TIP ON PEACE RUMORS Note to New York stock brokers: When you get panicky over peace rumors, ru-mors, read the following words of Col. N. B. Briscoe, commanding officer of-ficer at Fort Knox, Ky.: "There is much talk of early peace. If you were in a poker game, consider when you would like the game to end. Obviously that would be when you had all the chips in front of you. The Germans and the Japanese would be greatly pU-ascn to make peace now while they held captured possessions. " |