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Show Pffl mmksl Released ty Western Newspaper Union. COMPLICATED ARRANGEMENT OF FARM CREDIT FOR A WEEK I have devoted a portion of each day to an effort to fathom the intricacies of government govern-ment farm financing as operated by 10 different agencies of the government. govern-ment. In a brochure of less than 30 pages ihe Citizens National committee, 1409 L street, Washington, has attempted at-tempted to interpret how it is done and with what result, through only a small portion of these ten or more agencies. It is not the fault of that Committee that I do not understand; it is because the whole thing is so intricate and so complicated that it is beyond the scope of my thinking and analytical capacities. It reminds me much of that inverted in-verted pyramid of industrial and ' finance corporations built by Insull, 1 the crash of which tumbled many ' thousands, supposedly wealthy or I well-to-do people from a pinnacle of Imagined wealth to the depths of poverty. The only staple thing about that Insull inverted pyramid was its loundation of operating utility plants. They continued to operate. The only staple thing about the various financing financ-ing administrations, corporations, bureaus, associations and what have you in this medley of farm financing, Is the foundation, the credit of the government, backed by the pocket-book pocket-book of the American taxpayer. I think my week of studious effort ef-fort succeeded In untangling one small snarl. As I interpret it, congress, in 1933, established Production Credit Corporations and Associations, the Production Credit Associations being the offspring of the Corporations. The Corporations were financed with government funds, and these, in turn, financed the Associations Asso-ciations with government funds and without any interest ( charges. The investment of the government, through the Credit Corporations, was represented by non-voting stock in the Associations. Asso-ciations. As conditions improved, im-proved, congress had expected the farmers to buy up this government-owned stock and make of these Associations privately owned farm cooperative financing financ-ing organizations. Ten years after the government Started these Associations there were, on December 31, 1943, 523 of them in operation, with a total capitalization capi-talization of $102,405,376. Of that a mount the government still holds. through Production Credit Corporations, Corpora-tions, $75,770,460. The farmers had taken over $26,634,916. The farmers then owned 24 per cent, and theirs was the voting stock. The farmer members controlled while the government gov-ernment provided most of the funds. That was as far as I could get without assistance so I tried a local banker. He could not help me; the complications involved in the government's gov-ernment's farm loaning operations were beyond him. From the report of the Committee he understood many of the Associations were losing los-ing propositions, despite the fact that they paid no interest on the government money they were loaning. loan-ing. That, possibly, was the reason the canny, hard-headed, conservative conserva-tive farmer did not buy up the government gov-ernment stock in Production Credit Associations. BEAUTIFUL FESTIVAL OF ORANGE, CALIFORNIA WE AMERICANS, east and west, revere our past generations. In Boston the Pilgrims are never forgotten. for-gotten. In New York the early Dutch settlements are commemorated, commemorat-ed, in Virginia the memory of Capt. John Smith and his Jamestown associates asso-ciates is kept evergreen. So it goes from ocean to ocean. The West immortalizes im-mortalizes those pioneers who were the founders of mighty states. Typical Typ-ical of the West is the annual fruit harvest festival at Orange, California. Califor-nia. Each year it portrays the past and the present. In the colorful parade are representatives of the cowboys and the cowgirls of the not far distant past; the stage coaches that are f still remembered as the , means of public travel; the hidalgos of the Mexican days only 100 years ago; the burros of the miners from the nearby hills, and the horses, pin-tos pin-tos and broncs, without which no celebration in the West is complete. With these reminders of the past were the evidences of the present the bright-colored uniforms of the high school bands, led by high-stepping, bare-legged majorettes; beautifully beau-tifully decorated autos for which gas had been saved that the owners might participate in the three-mile line of march. It was a mingling of the past and the present that keeps ever green that past of romance and adventure that was the West. THE EFFORT WE MADE, at the instigation of our theoretical bureaucrats, bureau-crats, to Russianize the American farm cost the taxpayers more than 200 million dollars. Thnt was not much as compared with billions, but each little bit added to what we spend mounts into the billions.' Government-managed, collectivist farms proved a complete flop. That expenditure ex-penditure helped no one other than the bureaucratic farm managers. THERE IS NO SILVER LINING to the cloud over Hitler's head. |