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Show rfifPressure Groups -4nreat to War Production Organized Minorities, Anxious to Maintain Hard-Won Advantages, Overlook importance of 'All-American Front.' Cy DAUKIIAGE V?u.i Analyst and Commentator. ;4 y if ft V WNU Service, 1313 II Street, N-W Washington, I). C. The United States is having a time of it trying to do its share in a war where the guardians of every one of the United Nations' many fronts think theirs is the most important one. One reason why Australia pressed so hard for a Pacific Council, on which representatives of the Anzac nations could raise their voices along with Great Britain, was because be-cause they wanted to keep the importance im-portance of their part of the world before the President. Any Chinese can demonstrate to you that unless China is kept supplied the war will be lost and even Mr. Churchill insists in-sists that his front which right now is Russia's, is the number one hot-spot. hot-spot. These conflicting demands, however, how-ever, are not impossible to answer. We simply divide up what we have and pass it around. Because there are not enough ships to carry it all away (and because of the watchful watch-ful eyes of our army and navy) our own forces are at last getting pretty well equipped. As a matter of fact this competition competi-tion really helps speed production. But there is another kind of competition com-petition which doesn't help production. produc-tion. It is the competition of the various pressure groups inside the country. Each one wants to maintain the advantages it has won and in most cases justly won in the past with long and hard work. The great pressure pres-sure groups which exert a powerful influence on congress in peacetime are: the Legion, which seldom fails to get what it asks for; labor, which has had a long, uphill job but which now can call the turns; the farm bloc, which during the hard years in spite of its efforts was unable to do much for the farmer's lot until recently. re-cently. Even Big Business, which nobody could call the spoiled child of the New Deal, probably has quite as much influence as Citizen John Q. Nobody-in-particular. Many of these groups are now fighting for what they consider their just rights. But what they overlook is this: a large part of the population popula-tion has no lobby at all. In fact, the majority of the white collar folk, partly due to their indifference to politics, just don't count when the roll is called up yonder on Capitol Hill. This middle class, the unorganized salary earners who are sometimes politely referred to as the backbone of the nation, don't even rate deferments. de-ferments. They pay their taxes and in wartime they aren't important enough to do anything more than go to war. They don't make much trouble, but they do holler when they think they aren't getting an even break. The organized folks, on the other hand, who are just as good patriots and many of whose sons are in the army, nevertheless, are the ones who because of their political power cause a lot of pulling and hauling, and that makes more trouble for the government than the conflicting de-- de-- sires of our Allies. They each think their front the farm front, or the business or the labor front is the most important. It isn't. There is only one that is important: it is the all-American front. British Farmers Increase Yield When the war broke in earnest about the British Isles a terrific challenge faced the British farmer. He was told that 3,000,000 tons of imported feed for cows and poultry would be cut off. He had to cut down on his livestock and grow more potatoes and grain. Meadows went under the plow and 4.000,000 additional acres of arable land were put under cultivation. The number of farm horses dropped in two years by 300,000 head. In one typical county alone the acreage in potatoes was increased by 22,000. In order to bring about this situaJ tion aid to obtain co-operation for a "Food for Victory" program the minister of agriculture divided the country up into districts, appointed directors of each district and named a committee to work under each director. These committees classified classi-fied all farms as A, B, C, according to the efficiency of management. The C class was the problem. The owners or the tenants working them had either to show full co-operation within a limited time or get out and let an efficient farmer take over. Sometimes the new proprietor called on the 4-H members to help him. According to L. K. Elmhirst, writing writ-ing in the magazine Free World, "the system worked well." It was a highly arbitrary method, but the British farmer, who is an independent independ-ent person with a century of stubborn stub-born tradition of non-interference from government, yielded to the bitter bit-ter necessity. ... Thirst Versus Sweet Tooth America's alcoholic thirst is about to suffer in order to satisfy America's Amer-ica's sweet tooth. And 50,000,000 bushels of grain-wheat grain-wheat and corn are going to find a market most of which will go up in smoke. Rapidly the whiskey distilleries dis-tilleries of America are being turned into distillers of industrial alcohol to be turned into explosives. Most of this war demand for alcohol is now being satisfied with sugar because be-cause the industrial alcohol plants are equipped for the distillation of sugar (molasses) and not grain. But 25 whiskey plants, already' equipped for the distillation of grains, have stopped turning out a beverage and are working for the government. The President recently signed an order to take over the plants which make high wines, which means they distill 40-proof alcohol. They will have to be equipped to make the 190 proof required for industrial use. Then all whiskey making stops. In fact the whiskey making business busi-ness already has a crimp in it and the gin business has virtually evaporated evap-orated or will as soon as the distillers dis-tillers use up such alcohol as they have in storage. There is still four years' supply of whiskey in storage. Soon no more will be distilled. The blended whiskey whis-key making and gin making end when the 140-proof neutral spirits are exhausted. One bushel of wheat or corn will make V-k gallons of alcohol, so you can j see that it will take a lot of grain to make the 200,000,000 gallons gal-lons a year of alcohol which the government expects to be turning out for war by 1943. It takes time to convert the smaller small-er distilleries because a man ho is able to make very good whiskey cannot necessarily make alcohol. It takes installation of equipment in some plants not fully equipped. In other words there is a "change over" necessary just as there is when the automaker changes over his factory to make planes or tanks. That is the reason why in the meantime sugar has to be used, and why we have to ration it for other uses. Many people have written in saying say-ing that sugar rationing was foolishness foolish-ness when there was plenty of grain. It is just as foolish as saying that because you have a nation of a hundred hun-dred million people you have all the soldiers you need. It takes time to change a civilian into a soldier. It takes time to convert a sugar distillery dis-tillery to a grain distillery. Peanut Oil Peanuts to you! What do they mean to you? Something Some-thing for the monkey in the zoo, the elephant in the circus? Or perhaps your daily bread, or merely your peanut butter. In Washington, peanuts have still another meaning today. Thanks to the war, we need more peanuts, not to feed to Japanese prisoners, but to squeeze. Peanut oil is needed to fill the demand for essential oils cut off when the enemy took over the Netherlands Indies. The department of agriculture has asked that 2V4 times as many peanuts pea-nuts be planted to replace other oil-producers oil-producers stopped by the war (and to feed squirrels). As of March there were indications that we would have only a two-thirds plus crop. That isn't enough. And so we must have more soy beans which yield oils and many other things from vitamins to plastic ashtrays. The soy crop has already increased almost as rapidly as the price of the beans. But since we won't get all the peanuts we need this year; the cry is still "More soys!" |