OCR Text |
Show hoitie Town IN WASHINGTON tS - i - Farm Loan Types fpHREE TYPES of housing loans are available to farmers under the 1949 housing act recently passed by the 81st congress. The I3rm housing program is set up under the B'armers Home Administration Adminis-tration of the department of agriculture agri-culture which already is in the business of making loans to farmers farm-ers who have trouble obtaining ciedit from private sources. According to the provisions of the art all borrowers must be approved by the county farmers home committees composed com-posed of local farmers who are now tied in with the existing program. These committees certify that the borrower Is un-kble un-kble to get loans from private sources and the loans run to a -maximum of 35 years with In-terest In-terest at t per cent. Under this act only farm owners are eligible for these loans, although farm owners may obtain loans to improve houses of tenants, or sharecroppers or for hired workers. work-ers. First For the larger farms which are sufficiently productive to enable the borrower to repay the loan. The money may be used for improvement of the farm house or for outbuildings. Although as this is written no top limit on size of loans has been set, they may average av-erage approximately $2,500 per farm. Second Loans for farms which are considered potentially adequate, ade-quate, and indicate that the farm will be helped with aid of the loan. On this type of loan, payments pay-ments for the first few years are made easier and in certain cases the government may overlook or "forgive" a certain per cent of the first payments. The third type of loan includes grants and loans for very poor farms which hold little hope of becoming be-coming self-supporting. These will enable the poor farmer to improve his house, eliminate unsanitary and unsafe conditions. Grants under this type may be as high as $.")00 with loans running up to SI. 000. The law provides that for the first year 25 million dollars will be available for lending with another two million for outright out-right grants. According to the government experts probably 13,000 farmers may avail themselves them-selves of these loans. The only fly in the ointment of the measure is that the act merely authorizes the appropriations and it is up to congress to make the appropriations ap-propriations each year if the program pro-gram is to be carried out as provided pro-vided in the original act. First year's appropriations likely will be enacted. Public Power Issue Western senators are split wide open on the question of private versus public power, or more specifically the turning over of the big public power dams of the west to the private power interests, as a result of the battle on this question ques-tion both in the senate appropriations appropria-tions committee and on the floor of the senate. Senators Elmer Thomas of Oklahoma, Okla-homa, and Pat McCarran of Nevada Neva-da agreed with Senator Kenneth McKellar, Tennessee, to turn the electric production of government-built government-built dams over to monopolistic control of private utilities. Senators Sen-ators Joseph C. O'Mahoney of Wyoming, and Carl Haydcn of Arizona, Ari-zona, led the fight to continue government gov-ernment transmission of electricity produced at the dams to private consumers. How the other members of the 21-member committee voted is not certain since there was "no record vote," but Senator McKellar succeeded suc-ceeded in getting a majority of the 13 Democrat and eight Republican members to vote his way to turn the electrical product of these d;ims which belong to the people over to the private utilities at virtually vir-tually their own price, since they would be the only customers, and the utilities would in turn sell it to the consumers at their own price. This question of public transmission trans-mission of electricity from the public dams was an issue In the last campaign and one of the pledges of President Truman was that the government would build and operate the transmission transmis-sion lines. Whether this pledge shall be redeemed re-deemed at the moment seems questionable ques-tionable and may not be known until the closing hours of this con- gress. Congressman Walt Horan, of Washington state, declares "humid midsummer in Washington, D.C., is neither the place nor time for calm deliberation and careful decision de-cision on matters of legislative importance im-portance to the United States, its citizens or the world." . . . John Foster Dulles, new senator from New York, delegate to the United Nations, Governor Dewey's choice for secretary of state, boldly told his Republican colleagues he wanted a place on the foreign relations committee. |