OCR Text |
Show Government to Encourage Greater Food Production Prepare for Increased Aid to Democracies; Newspaper Men From Small Town 'Make Good' in Washington. By BAUKHAGE National Farm and Home Hour Commentator. WNU Service, 1343 'H' Street, N. W., Washington, D. C. WASHINGTON. Before long the government will take steps to give the American farmer an incentive for raising more animals and increasing in-creasing the egg and milk output for this arsenal of democracy, it can be safely predicted at this time. Furthermore, Fur-thermore, with the incentive will undoubtedly un-doubtedly go some type of guarantee, guaran-tee, as in the case of the manufacturer, manufac-turer, that the farmer will be protected pro-tected at least from possible loss in such undertakings. At most, he might even be guaranteed a profit. Here is the background of the situation, situ-ation, details of which government officials are not ready as yet to make public: Food is as much a munition of war as guns. The United States in pledging its aid to democracies is starting to send food supplies to them. Important Food-Weapons. One of these food-weapons is wheat. We have plenty of that grain. The department of agriculture estimates esti-mates that at present there are more than 525,000,000 bushels in excess ex-cess of domestic needs. Another food weapon, and a vital one for fighting men, is the proteins meat, milk, milk products, poultry and eggs. Rationing of these products prod-ucts is becoming severe in England. American agriculture does not have surpluses of these things. But farms are the factories where they can be produced, and we do have surpluses of one of the chief raw materials for the process, namely, corn. Present Pres-ent estimates indicate that the corn surplus will reach 700,000,000 bushels bush-els by October 1. How maiy more cows, pigs and chickens do we need in order to be able to feed ourselves as well as the fighting democracies? That is a hard question to answer. The department of agriculture calls it an "imponderable." "imponder-able." It also admits that if everybody every-body in this country right now were getting a square meal we would not have enough of the protein foods to go around. Hence, the plans-in-the-making to encourage American farms to "manufacture" proteins in the interest in-terest of national defense. Rural Newspaper Men 'Make Good' in Washington Two small town boys, both trained on weekly newspapers, have made good in the radio world in Washington Washing-ton and neither of them can get the country out of his blood and is proud of it. One is a lanky, red-haired Hoosier, Robert M. Menaugh, and the other, scholarly looking D. Harold Mc-Grath, Mc-Grath, who grew up in the Cripple Creek mining district in Colorado. They are the superintendents, re- spectively, of the new house and senate radio galleries. "My favorite newspaper," says ington with Representative Crowe from his own Indiana district. Although his family roots go clear back to the beginning of Salem, Ind., history, there is an ancient tale which makes him a little uncertain as to who he really is. It seems that four generations ago two little boys were stolen from two different families, the Menaughs and Hins-leys, Hins-leys, by the Indians. One was four and one was five. Later, a trapper reported that he had heard that one of the boys, he didn't know which, had died. Still later, the other boy returned to the village. But which boy? Six years has passed. The little fellow had an Indian name and he had forgotten his own. Both families fam-ilies claimed him and finally a public pub-lic trial was held and he was awarded award-ed to the Menaughs. Bob is a great-grandson great-grandson of that boy. High School Start. Bob started newspaper work in high school, buying an old press and setting the type himself. Later he worked on the Salem Democrat, the oldest newspaper in Indiana. He says that his greatest thrill came in speaking on the first national broadcast broad-cast celebrating the opening of the radio gallery on June 26, 1939, an honor shared by your correspondent. McGrath, head of the senate side started work in 1910 at the age of 16 as a reporter, succeeding Lowell Thomas on the Victor (Colo.) Record. Rec-ord. The Record was a four-sheet daily and McGrath was to have other reportorial training in Boise and Wallace, Idaho, before he got the urge to own a weekly. He paid a hundred dollars down and fifty dollars a month for the Kellogg (Idaho) Record. Equipment, Equip-ment, one job press, one Cotrell flatbed flat-bed newspaper press and lots of hand type. "Mrs. McGrath and I," he says, "learned to peg type and with the help of one printer got out the paper until I joined the army in 1918." After the war he secured the Jerome Je-rome County (Idaho) Times which he ran until he sold out in 1922. He came to Washington with Senator Schwellenbach of Washington and was with him until he took over the gallery job. Minority Party in U. S. Is Still Important I walked along the corridor of the Capitol building, turned down a narrow nar-row hall, got into a still narrower elevator and went up to the second floor. Opposite the elevator door is the office of a small town editor. The office was not a newspaper office and the editor was not editing at the moment he has to do that by remote control most of the time nowadays for his newspaper is located lo-cated in North Attleboro, Mass. He is Joe Martin, minority leader of the house of representatives and beginning be-ginning his second term as chairman chair-man of the Republican national committee. com-mittee. , The subject of our conversation had to do with what a minority oartv Bob, "is the oldest in Indiana and the one I used to work on. It's the Salem Democrat." McGrath, who has owned two weekly newspapers, says: "I have made seven auto trips from coast to coast in the last seven years and I noticed that the weekly newspaper is on a much more solid basis than it was when I was a publisher 25 years ago. I still think the weekly is the best read news publication in America." Bob is the veteran of the two in radio because it was the house of representatives which first recognized recog-nized that radio men needed the same facilities that the members of the long-established press gallery have if they are properly to cover the doings of congress. So in May of 1939 the lower chamber appropriated appropri-ated money for a superintendent and an assistant and amended its rules so that radio newsmen had their own little corner a pew railed off from the visitors' gallery right next to the newspaper men's, seats above the speaker's rostrum. Senate Follows Suit. The senate, being a more ponderous ponder-ous body, followed suit some months later. When the question came up to the speaker of the house as to who would be his choice for the superintendent superin-tendent on his side of the Capitol, there wasn't any question about Bob Menaugh's qualifications. He has been a well-known figure around the Capitol ever since he came to Wash- does when a national emergency exists ex-ists and partisan politics is supposed to be forgotten. Chairman Martin told me the Republican party has plenty to do. "The Republican party has two big jobs ahead of it today," this Scotch-Irish Yankee said. "The first job is to keep congress from getting-ahead getting-ahead of the people." I asked him just what he meant. "I've been out in the country," he answered, "and I know the people don't want us here in Washington to do anything that will get the nation na-tion into war. If it weren't for continual con-tinual unspectacular work on the part of the minority, especially in committees, the country would be in far worse shape then it is totjay." But a still bigger task lies ahead, Joe Martin told me. "Our second job," he said, "is to prepare for the situation when the chaos of the World war which has produced the present emergency is over. Then it will be the responsibility responsi-bility of the Republican party to get back the democratic processes which are being sacrificed today by the emergency grants of power to the executive." Of course, Chairman Martin believes be-lieves the country will turn to the Republicans then, as what he calls a stabilizing force. Meanwhile, he says they must continue to police the majority party policies. |