| Show Bruc Bru karla charls washington digest find joker in department of agriculture appropriation bill its kllc soon to be bc famous food stamps and how advanced thinkers think it will work billion dollars Is all alicy want by WILLIAM BRUCKART service national press presa washington D C WASHING TONIt it was not so long ago six or eight years perhaps that the annual cost of the department of agriculture to the taxpayers of tile the country amounted to something luce like there was some talk even in those days about the drain upon tile the federal treasury resulting from department of agriculture operations the totals were questioned many persons wondered whether the politicians were justified in voting that much money to the department because there was little to show in the way of results that Is congressmen could show very little except the packages of seeds sent out to their districts it was in those days however that the department of agriculture was seeking to operate effectively farming was not regarded by the folks who used to run the department as a subject for politics tho the departmental depart mentill officials were going about their business rendering assistance si in the form of advice and promoting better farming when tile the farmers asked tor for it I 1 was reminded of those days recently when the bouse appropriations committee brought out for consideration the appropriations appropriate ons bill for the department of agriculture for the fiscal your year that begins next july 1 A rip van winkle who could have slept through the last 10 years would have believed truly that b he e was in another world the new money bill for the department contains a total of more than the measure indeed ranks as the third largest appropriations bill of this year when altogether there Is likely to be almost appropriated what Is planned to do with a billion dollars it Is extremely difficult to realize what a billion dollars Is that Is it is difficult for me to understand what it is I 1 con can write the figures glibly enough but to comprehend that sum of money or a billion of anything is something almost outside tho the pale of human knowledg knowledge go yet that is what the department of agriculture seeks this year end and here is how that money Is supposed to be divided for soil conservation payments for parity payments tor for rood road building for soil and moisture conservation and operations for vic the farm tenancy program tor for eradicating ioas and bangs disease for the weather bureau and its services for retiring lands for soil and moisture investigation vesti gation for wild life restoration tor for operative cooperative co farm for estry for the water facilities program there were some other odds and ends embracing items of 20 or 40 40 or 00 90 thousand dollars amounts so small that men almost smirk because they have forgotten how to speak in such limited numbers then and here la is the joker which is hidden away I 1 really should not say eay hidden because no reference is made in the agriculture bill language the joker is that there are almost countless millions of other dollars with which the department can play around including approximately of money for use in getting rid of farm surpluses that is the money from which secretary wallace and ills his advanced thinkers will draw funds for the soon to be famous food stamps the country got its belly full of blue eagles before the was plowed under but the undistinguished yet befitting end that came to the blue eagle has not deterred the advanced thinkers from attempting something else that is blue a blue stamp for relief food yes relief workers will have tho the some same wages as before but they will receive free blue stamps with which to buy surplus products for foods how wallaces men think blue food stamp will work I 1 must write a little bit about that blue food stamp about how the advanced thinkers think it will work before I 1 report on the main department of agriculture up appropriation bill it seems to be secretary wallaces idea of a more abundant life to designate certain farm products each week as being surplus and to help get them off of the glutted market by making them available for relief relict workers kitchens the first trial of the scheme will be limited to six cities in those areas the relief supervisors will be supplied with books of blue stamps they ire are rather pretty stamps too each worker will got get a book ot of sta Ps of a specified value he con can tako take those stamps to his grocery store and use them lust just like they were quarters qu artera or halt half dollars or dollars the will take them ond and he will bo be paid hon est cst to goodness untied united states money for them thus will the surplus stocks of food products bo be reduced and the remainder will bring better prices or so say any the advanced thinkers when I 1 read the explanation ot of the program that was sent me by one ona of mr wallaces publicity staff the first thing that struck me was the extreme discrimination that will result it Is easy to see take any man who Is trying to hold down a private job it may be paying him only 50 a month or about the same as the relief worker gets natural ly he would like to be making more money who but he sticks on his job and stays off of relief then when he gets paid he goes to the grocery store to buy some food ile iio pays cash and gets his food about the some moment a relief worker walks in orders the same list of groceries perhaps and pays for them out of a stamp benok it appears to rno me that the hard bitten private worker Is going to find little solace in remaining on his job it strikes me he and millions of others are going to bo be resentful of such tactics see possibility Creating of A lot of bootleggers there to Is another phase of the pic ture which was mentioned to me by Ile representative hope of kansas one of the ranking members of the house committee on agriculture lie ile suggested that the blue stamps are going to create a lot of bootleggers for the relief workers are not permitted to buy liquor with the stamps they wont bo be redeemed if they are used to buy anything but food however flo wever mr hope could see sec no reason why a relief worker use the stamps to buy liquor from a liquor store and the eq bor store owner might possibly be a n crook it Is possible you know ile he might own a food store too or he might have an understanding with a food store owner who would take tho the stamps at a few pennies discount what Is to stop such pro cedore its your guess the whole thing strikes me as be ing so silly as to dely defy ones powers of imagination it Is dealt with here at such length only because I 1 regard it as typical of a great many things that are going on within the department of agriculture for which more than is soon to be appropriated for a years operations the blue stamp scheme is destined to fall even as the plowing under of crops and the slaughtering of pigs was doomed abor nin and as the limitation of crop production was certain to flare back on those who were sucked into the maelstrom of nit wit plans now lest I 1 bo be misunderstood let me restate with emphasis that there is good work that the department con can do and has been doing road building appropriations appropriation for instance where would this country be had there been no attempt to build usable roads who can say that eradication of tuberculosis and bangs disease among live stock is not a valuable aid to farmers learn beautiful phrases but at rather high cost I 1 am not prepared to say that the wild life restoration program is wholly bad it seems probable that ithe the country ought to rebuild rebuild tho the wild life stocks that have been wantonly destroyed in the days when people could go out and shoot ducks or deer or what have you without thought of the morrow it is a program for which considerable justification fi can be advanced but it is to be noted that most of these items are small neither the department of agriculture administration nor the members of the house and the senate have seen fit to do more than main maintain them I 1 have seen the inmates of the capitol squirm and fuss and scowl about some of them while swallowing the items reaching into hundreds of millions with the greatest of glee As I 1 said it was not so long ago that department of agriculture appropriations were regarded as huge it they to 40 millions As far as I 1 can see agriculture is no better off today than it was in those years of course a very great number of farT farmers ners have learned that the beautiful phrases like the more abundant life and such are meaningless but I 1 venture the assertion that the education has been rather expensive from all of these things it is surely made to appear that there are some large ethiopian gentlemen in the wood pile when the politicians and the ad vinced thinkers joined hands to manage agriculture just then federal expenses for the department of agriculture began zooming upward 0 western acer union |
