Show m 0 bast price premium r battle grows in importance war food administration faces indrea increasingly difficult problem of getting bashful beef cattle to market by BAUKHAGE news neiva analyst and service union trust building washington D 0 the fight over subsidies pardon me I 1 use that word sub tidies sidles the new deal like li it the fight over price premiums on farm products is once more the chief conc concern ern of the administration and the members ot of congress who do not see eye to eye on this painful question the smoke of the battle over the veto ot of the subsidy ban included in the commodity credit corporation bill has settled and since then there was another veto the tax bill that d ant fare so we well but the far farm m bloc members are not so as to believe that the president dentandt and congress are still far enough apart on the subsidy question that another veto could not be sustained in the senate the cooler heads of the opposition know this and are not willing to go through the same futile process again in the house it Is a different matter although this Is not likely to change the final anal picture house leader joe martin while conceding no jot or tittle to the administration that he be can withhold has made it plain that price control Is necessary and he going to allow too much delay on the part of those who want an anti subsidy rider attached to the OPA bill he has other plans of his own war food administration officials are quoted as admitting that the case of the bashful beeves is one of their heir greatest problems concretely they have the job of enticing two or three million head of beef cattle off the ranges and into the butcher shops during early spring and summer and the only thing that they almon know of to make the cattle move is the good old reliable that makes the more mare go cash money since the administration Is sitting on the cell ceilings and refusing to allow prices to the consumer to go up uncle sani sam will probably have to make up the difference again if congress will let him in the form of a price premium to the stockmen stoc kmen the bankers stake and the government is wondering about something else besides a few meatless mondays or tuesdays or wednesdays it Is worried about the banker who has a stake in steaks as well as the cattleman and beefeater cattle on the ranges have increased beyond the feed on the ranges the average livestock population of america in the years 1922 to 1942 was 69 million head roughly lets say half of this was dairy cattle now the estimate Is 82 million head and the ratio of eating cows to milking cows has increased alarmingly in the last few years and the beeves are now home on the range because there a price incentive to lure them to slaughter the government feared this feared first the famine and then thel the flood it now looks us as if the famine was coming and the flood is not far behind and this is where the banker comes knocking at the door he remembers other gluts when the drouth tor for instance sent all the cattle to market ct at once ruining the industry making the bankers notes just so much wallpaper but how the simple citizen asks can there be a price drop when the government has placed a floor under prices as well as a ceiling over them well see what happened to our friend the hog the farmer brought his pigs to market the government erni rient fixed the price which the packers were bound to pay but so many pigs arrived that the packer pack them and the law say he had to buy what he use so the farmer rather than pick ui up his pigs and carry them home again sold them off at disgracefully low prices to the smart boys finally the smart boys got gat the floor price the butcher got his ceiling price which the consumers with full pocketbooks and empty stomachs were glad to pay all the farmer got was mad this happened why the government says simply because some farmers seeing as how bow there was going to be such a good market for hogs exceeded thea quotas got too hoggish one district in iowa I 1 was told increased its pig crop by 53 per six hundred former seamen a a on an and officers of the american merchant ere ant marine a who had been ind inducted c into the e U S army from shor sl e e employment ploy in the last eight months 0 a have been released to return to sea the american red cross purchased more than pocket teed books book last year for free distribution trib ution to servicemen cent when the figure the govern ment had set was 15 per cent 4 more about that later and so the war food administration Is afraid the same thing might 11 happen appen to the cattle market and the banker Is afraid it would be bad enough if 11 we ran into a glut like the hog jam but as one livestock expert put it we shudder to think what might happen if an early drouth developed there would be a great stampede to move cattle to market transportation and processing facilities might not be able to handle the movement the result m might ight be the loss of thousands and thousands of head of cattle R M evans member of the federal reserve board tor for agriculture who is a former agricultural adjustment administrator Is urging the bankers in the cattle industry to do their share in coaxing ferdinand off the range about elastic prices of course the cattlemen have been among the most violent critics of the price control administration and their representatives have maintained a steady battle here in washington in an effort to remove the ceiling prices from beef or as they say make the prices elastic so that prices would rise and fall in accordance with the seasonal demand the catt lemens viewpoint as presented by joe G montague of the texas and southwestern cattle raisers association bolls down his bis plaint to a simple statement cattle just provide the frames to hang beef on the lord knows weve produced the frames but somebody fell down on the job of hanging the beet beef on eni em en i mr montague told me the other day that the weights have gone down faster than even he expected although he predicted the glut and the promised famine ever since the fixed price was made last october they have gone off 27 to 28 pounds a head and he expects this will continue until july when grass feeding begins again im em trying to get the cattle off the ranches but I 1 cant do it the feed 1 lots are not taking them because there any teed feed I 1 could sell ell thousands of pounds of feed today if I 1 could get my hands on it the government reports show that theres a lol lo 10 of feed somewhere but we cant find it hoarded corn there is plenty of feed in the shape of corn in the country but the farmers with their government assured prices on hogs are hoarding boarding it they are transforming it into pork the government asked tor for this when it put a premium on hog raising as we have explained but many farmers poultry and dairy farmers and others outside the jorn corn belt need feed not only farmers but industrialists who need corn for their chemicals are complaining the army and navy who need their pyo products ducts have echoed their pleas so the government is smack up against the problem of prying this teed feed corn loose from the farmers who are keeping it to teed feed to their hogs the only way they can shake the kernels loose is to increase Ln crease the price pr i ace of corn the only way they can do that without breaking through price ceilings is to subsidize corn in other words buy it at a price which will make it more profitable to the f farmer armer to sell it than to feed it to his hogs Mont agues argument ar is thit that because the cattle business is seasonal you have to have flexibility in price tf if the price is nailed down the cattleman will sell his grass fed cattle in september instead of holding out for higher prices in the spring and save going through the anguish of zero weather of course under price control the theory is that th atthe the flexibility is provided by the subsidy excuse me arain by the government offering ai u price premium which gives the cattleman enough for a fair profit but increase the price to the consumer and start ste rt inflation but the cattlemen dont want sub price premiums they want prices to rise and tall fall in the good old fashioned way and that Is where the issues in the fight over the proposed amendment to the OPA bill are neatly joined B BRI R I 1 E F S by baukhage united states mints last year turned out nearly one tenth as many coins as have been produced in the past years nazi Mini minister ste of the interior heinrich himmler in ordering the registration of a new class of 0 17 year old german girls lor for labor service ruled that all applications top for determent deferment will be useless |