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Show Stamp Program Takes Up Slack In Loss of Foreign Food Markets CHICAGO. As the food stamp plan moves into the third year, farmers, housewives, public officials, offi-cials, welfare administrators and chamber of commerce organizations carefully moisten and affix their own stamp of approval to the project. proj-ect. This new method of administering a subsidy, so that the distribution system would serve broad social purposes and in general maintain the essential profit-and-loss principle, princi-ple, was the brainchild of Milo Perkins, Per-kins, former manufacturer and now head of the Surplus Marketing administration ad-ministration in Washington. With reservations, the blue and orange economic gadget has worked to the satisfaction of those most concerned, con-cerned, as evidenced by the recent arrival of the political stork, who calmly deposited a little brother in the form of the cotton stamp plan and broadly hinted that the next arrival would be in the field of low-cost low-cost housing. Lose Foreign Markets. When foreign markets for surplus products, principally food, faded away in 1930, and the country was faced with one of its most vexing problems, "economy of abundance," the nation's leaders cast about for a solution. People actually faced starvation while living in the midst of plenty. Jobs and savings were gone and while foodstuffs rotted in the fields for want of market, crops were plowed under, acreage restricted re-stricted and marginal land retired from cultivation, in a desperate attempt at-tempt to set the wheels of industry rolling again. Scientific agriculture added to the country's woes by increasing in-creasing the quantity of farm products prod-ucts with less labor, thereby further building up the unemployment roster. Foreign trade agreements failed to save the country's $800,000,000 volume vol-ume to them, because the purchasing purchas-ing nations were more interested then in making themselves self-sufficient self-sufficient and were eliminating all possible imports. Search for Solution. Vice President Wallace, then secretary sec-retary of agriculture, sums up the situation as it appeared then to authorities in the Capitol: "First, we had to find a market for farm surpluses, and we knew that a surplus at one price might be a sell-out at another. Second, we didn't like the spectacle of people hungry from too little food while we were worrying over too much. Senator Sen-ator Vandenberg proposed to solve the first problem by sending our surpluses sur-pluses abroad and selling them at a lower price there, but some of us thought that if we were going in for a two-price system we'd better do it at home and let our own needy have the benefit" Studies by nutritional experts revealed re-vealed some startling facts. Working Work-ing people were paying only between 1 and 12 cents per meal average while those millions on relief could only allot half of that amount for their food. The result of this was to continue to pile up foodstuffs in bins all over the country. Despite its shrinkage the major hope was still that of the domestic market because our own people would continue to buy food regardless regard-less of the disappearance of the foreign for-eign markets due to the war. After other methods had been found unsatisfactory un-satisfactory or inadequate, such as soup kitchens for the needy and to utilize surplus wheat, lunches for school children, direct distribution of hams and other meat to households house-holds and other schemes, the food stamp plan was created. It was first tried out in Rochester, N. Y., and is now well known and popular in the country's largest metropolis, New York city. Approximately Ap-proximately 350 areas are now benefiting bene-fiting by the plan while about 1,500 more have applied to Washington. Direct savings of $200,000 is shown by the statement of Commissioner William Hodson of the New York city department of welfare and the food stamp plan this year will cost only $77,000 as compared with the $277,000 cost direct distribution of government-purchased supplies previously. pre-viously. Said Mr. Hobson, "People like the plan for many reasons. One is that they can purchase what they want, when they need it, like the rest of us do. Another because they know they can arrange a more healthy diet, and the savings will stretch the city's budget for relief cases and that is no small item." Milo Perkins, originator of the idea, added his views on the subject by saying: Predict Wide Benefits. "The conservatives like it," he said, gulping down some of Brazil's surplus coffee from a paper cup, "because it goes through the regular regu-lar channels of trade and spreads its benefits all along the line. They feel safer about it that way than if the government had set up its own machinery ma-chinery of handling. In the second place, they like it because it creates purchasing power for things they feel it a disgrace for any American to have to do without, like nourishing nourish-ing food. And in the third place and you hear more about this now than when the plan started tbey regard re-gard it as a hedge against trouble in the future. You'll find them talking talk-ing already about what's going to happen when this war activity ends. Improve Distribution. "The liberals like it because they regard it as a new kind of money, and they have an obscure feeling that these blue-and-orange tickets give the needy an access to the kind of wealth they most need to have. Also, they are pleased because the plan makes it possible to distribute certain types of things that can't effectively be given away. They think our present system of distribution distribu-tion needs remodeling, and they'd far rather have government money spent for the better distribution of food than for buying and hoarding it while people go hungry. "As for the middle-of-the-road man, he likes it because it makes sense to him. He's found some of the government's gov-ernment's programs pretty hard to tie in with his own experience, but tell him 'Let's fix it so the hungry eat the surplus and he's all for it.' " In the race between food production produc-tion and consumption, with the honors hon-ors too strongly with production today, to-day, there is a theoretical solution to the problem, according to the Washington experts. They suggest that a way be found to raise to $100 per month the income of all families receiving less than that today. They point out that the national expenditure expendi-ture for food alone would increase by approximately $2,000,000,000, which would greatly assist the farmer, farm-er, and in turn, the city man, as about one-half of this amount would revert to the farmer |