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Show General nod HUGH s. fijt Johnson M Jour: UJj Usual Foilon J WNU Somes Washington, D. C. FARM EXPORT PROBLEM It is belatedly gratifying to learn that the department of agriculture is now considering the "two-price" system of disposing of farmer's crops both as to domestic and foreign for-eign consumption. For export trade it will 'buy up the surplus which no home market consumes and sell it abroad for the best price it will bring. To increase in-crease domestic consumption, it will extend the food-stamp plan for surplus sur-plus products, which is also a "two-price" "two-price" system giving lower prices to the poor to insure an adequate ;. diet to all our people and to remove the American reproach of "starvation "starva-tion in the midst of plenty." As I understand it, although the details are not yet plain, the public, pub-lic, all of us, will pay for the discount dis-count below market prices on the food stamp sale of butter, eggs, citrus and other fruits, meats and fresh vegetables and even cotton for the poor. I can t see much the matter with that, much as I dislike the growing cost of government. This column began boosting the food-stamp plan long before it was announced and as soon as Henry Wallace told me about it. My only regret was that I had not thought of it first. I believe George Peek and I did think first of the "two-price" system on export surplus way back in 1921 It is almost a necessary corollary oi our tariff system. We have main tained here partly by the tariff, a structure of prices far above tha' of the rest of the world. No tarifl and no purely domestic device can keep on that high level the prices of surplus crops wheat, cotton and animal fats. This is because the price of the surplus fixes the price of the whole crop whether sole abroad or at home and nothing that can be done at home can prevent pre-vent that dire result. The net effect is that, while all the rest of our people enjoy the high er American standards, the farmer producing the export crops is thrusi outside our tariff walls. In equity there is no argument against his having a "parity price" (one for what he sells on the domestic market mar-ket on the same high level charged for what he buys) but there is no good argument for his receiving such a high price for what he produces in excess of domestic requirements which must be sold in export. There are only two alternatives, alterna-tives, and one of them is abortive The sensible one is that now suggested, sug-gested, to insure an American price for the part of the crop consumed at home and to sell the surplus for what it will bring. The other is what has been attempted for the past eight years to jimmy up the American price for the whole crop by loans, by restriction on acreage, by storing unmanageable surplus, and other inventions. It kept up precariously the Amer ican price, but it constantly threatened threat-ened the American markets by accumulating ac-cumulating an unmanageable surplus. sur-plus. It priced American farm products out of world markets they had enjoyed for a century. WILLKIE'S 'BLITZ' Mr. Willkie was asked, on landing, land-ing, for comment on my statement that he had only been permitted to see what British authorities wanted him to see. His reply was that 1 didn't know what I was talkinp about. Of course, I never said anything remotely resembling that. I said that he had been completely advised ad-vised by the voice of hard-bitten experience ex-perience how to make effective the kind of pilgrimage on which he was embarked. He was advised (as we all know now) that Winston Churchill is the most adroit advocate of our time. and perfectly and properly. , He was advised to listen to him respectfully re-spectfully and then say, if familiarities familiari-ties had progressed so far: "Well. Winnie our hearts are all with you but you are a Briton praise God. halt Arnerican and I want to go home as all-American and make a realistic report to the American people. I only criticized Mr. Willkie foi not doing that, but exposing himsell to every emotional impulse not for seeing only what the British gov ernment wanted him to see. I believe be-lieve that they would have withheld nothing from him. He elected the emotional, spectacular and blitz-publicity blitz-publicity role. He took what he was told from Mr. Churchill. He contented con-tented himself with an exploration of British fortitude, which we of British birth took for granted. He did it a time when one of the most serious pieces of legislation ever presented to our people was before our congress. He became a part of a British effort to bums-rush that legislation Lord Halifax's astounding as-tounding visit to our congressional committee demanding a "timetable." "time-table." Mr. Churchill's glorious and masterful speech (the interior texture tex-ture of which reveals much careful effort to appease or allay American opinion on this bill) and, finally, Mr. Willkie's appearance advocating exactly ex-actly what Mr. Churchill would like further giving away of the navy. |