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Show What's the Future tor Price Supports? The current battle in Congress over farm price supports is perhaps one of the most significant in recent years. Many observers believe that this session of Congress will mark the turning point in the nation's expensive fram price support program. They believe that the whole idea of farm price supports is on the way out. They note that the once powerful farm bloc is no longer the feared thing it once was. They know that consumers now wield a more powerful bloc of votes and consumers are not overly happy about being taxed to support the price support program and then have to pay the high prices it helps produce. But there are other experts who don't follow this line of thinking. These observers feel that to destroy the farm price support program would be to touch off a real, full-scale depression. They point out that most of the nation's big depressions of the past have come quickly on the heels of a farm slump. Under the Republican administration of the past six years farmer income has steadily declined in the face of increases in (Continued on Page Four) What's the Future for Price Supports? (Continued from Page 1) other fields. A Democratic Congressman from Missouri, Rep. George Christopher, a farmer himself, put it to Congress this way: "Shortly after I was elected I said that you could start a depression on the American farm but you could not keep it there; that it would break out and go to town; then it would go on to the cities. "The only charge brought against the farmer is that perhaps he is doing his job 2 to 3 per cent too well. They say we are producing a surplus. "Every big-city Congressmen that comes to the floor of this House shoud get down on his knees every night before he goes to bed and thank God and the American farmer that we do produce pro-duce a surplus. It guarantees that even though his folks in the city may get out of a job and have to live in breadlines and soup kitchens again, which God forbid, there will be bread , in the breadlines and the soup in the soup kitchens will not be too thin. . "Now I come to another question. If we have done our job well and delivered to society and our government what we owe to society and our government, what does our government and society owe to us ? They owe us equality of purchasing power. It is not right that industry and labor and the professions should give a dollar's worth of goods and services and receive a dollar while we give a dollar's worth of food and fiber and receive only 80 cents. The farmer does not ask for a subsidy, he does not ask for a gift, he does not ask for government coddling. All the farmer asks for and all he has ever asked for is that when he delivers a dollar's worth of food and fiber to the market they pay him a dollar for it and not 80 cents. "Producing the food and fiber we need is the farmer's job. The American farmer is the most efficient in the world. In the past 10 years factory production per man-hour worked has increased in-creased 28.6 per cent, but farm production per man-hour has increased in-creased 83.8 per cent. "This county produces $50 billion worth of raw materials each year. Of that amount about $20 billion comprises ores, coal, oil and gas, fish and forestry products, and $30 billion of it is in agricultural products. So among other things, the American farmer produces $3 out of every $5 worth of raw materials produced in the United States some job for 12 per cent of the population, I'd say." There you have it. Take your choice. |
