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Show Changes Are Proposed In U. S. Sugar Quotas Administration Holds That Revision of Present Pres-ent Arrangement Would Represent a Slap At America's Good Neighbor Policy. By BAUKHAGE National Farm and Home Hour Commentator. WNU Service, 1343 H Street, N-W, Washington, D. C. Sugar Quota And 'Good Neighbors In 1934 "after long and extensive hearings," as the Congressional Record puts it, a sugar law was passed. The law stabilized the sugar industry by establishing quotas to be raised, imported and refined and provided for benefit payments pay-ments to growers for following certain cer-tain agricultural and labor practices. prac-tices. Again, in 1937, after long and extensive hearings it was renewed. Behind that phrase "long and extensive" ex-tensive" lies the story of a ferocious battle on the part of the sugar interests in-terests to defeat the administration measure. Each time they failed, but early this month in 40 minutes and in the teeth of the state department, depart-ment, the department of interior, the department of agriculture and the White House, the. law was so rewritten by the house of representatives represen-tatives as to amount to defeat of administration wishes. The senate is as yet to act, after .studying reports from the above named departments. The bill as ; originally written authorized the secretary of agriculture to estimate the amount of sugar required by American consumers for a definite period. Then, according to a prescribed pre-scribed scale, it apportioned quotas among the producers of continental United States, Puerto Rico, the Hawaiian Ha-waiian Islands, Cuba and other foreign for-eign countries. As passed by the house, the present pres-ent measure would increase the amount of sugar purchased from the beet and cane sugar growers on the mainland and reduce the amount of raw and refined sugar purchased from other growers. This step, if finally enacted into law, says the administration, would be a slap in the face of good-neighborship: Cuba alone would have her quota cut by 50,000 tons of raw and 75,000 tons of refined sugar. And it would completely dislocate the computations . of Secretary Wickard who thinks that the sugar quotas and benefit payments for certain practices have kept the sugar sug-ar situation pretty well in hand. The only lobby I ever heard the President mention by name is the "sugar lobby." It is one of the most powerful pressure groups in the capital. Speaker Rayburn Has Power, Energy I looked down from the radio gallery gal-lery of the house of representatives the other afternoon on a large pink globule in the well of the chamber. Every eye in the house was centered cen-tered on it. It seemed to glow, to radiate power and energy as well as a roseate hue. It was the all but hairless head When Sam had absorbed all that the country school had to offer either in its regular sessions or when some visiting pundit proclaimed his views, he went to his father and said he had to go to college. The father was in favor of the motion but regretfully re-gretfully explained that there was nothing in the till for racoon-skin coats or flivvers or the local equivalent equiva-lent of the day. He did, however, present his ambitious son with $25 in coin of the realm and escorted him to the station on the branch line that was to take him to the Texas normal college. The boy was a good student, bright and determined to learn all that there was taught him. But when he finished his course and since he was, as we have noted, already al-ready on his way to congress, the next step was naturally the State university law school. His shingle was hardly floating on the Bonham breezes when he was already ready for the legislature. At 24 he was elected. He was a member for four years and then, as per schedule, was elected speaker and served in that capacity for two more. Meanwhile in the summers sum-mers he practiced law. Then one day in 1912 the county paper announced an-nounced in blackfaced headlines: "Stores Closed All Day and Everybody Ev-erybody Out to Hear Fannin County's Coun-ty's Gifted Son Who Is Candidate for Congress." Just how this specialist in measures meas-ures dealing with some of the most intricate and abstruse principles of political economy translates his record into votes for his constituents would seem difficult to fathom. His purely agricultural district is far more interested in stock with four legs and a moo than it is in a stock exchange, and a transportation act to them is chiefly the act of transporting trans-porting a bale of cotton from hither to hence. But he gets things done for the folks and they seem to take him and his other achievements at their face value. Written in large letters of achievement achieve-ment against his name are the Securities Exchange act, the Holding Hold-ing Company act and the Rural Electrification act, all, and especially especial-ly the first two, representing long and bitter battles. The pressure exerted on Representative Repre-sentative Rayburn during the battle' for the securities and holding company com-pany laws was terrific. Tie President Presi-dent knew this would be the case and that was the reason the Texan was chosen to handle them. Everybody Every-body knew that once he got his teeth into the measures neither fine words nor offered favors nor threats would make him let go. It is still Sam Rayburn now stepping down from the speaker's rostrum who is picked to lead some of the President's biggest battles bat-tles on Capitol Hill. , of Speaker Sam Rayburn, and out of that head came the energy which directed the action which saved from defeat the administration's measure to revise the neutrality law. It was ; that energy which jammed through ! the Security Exchange law 'against j stone wall opposition. It was that energy which carried out an idea I starting in that same head when it i was on callow shoulders and finally made him speaker of the United States house of representatives. A barefoot boy curled up in the j corner reading biographies of the i country's great men was the avatar of this congressman. And he was still a schoolboy when he announced the fact that he was going to run for the state legislature as soon as he finished his law course, that he was going to be speaker some day and after that run for congress. And that's just what he did. And all he had to start with was $25 and his father's blessing. Young Sam Rayburn was 1 of 11 children, whose forbears came by way of Tennessee from Virginia to a borderline county in Texas (he was born in Bonham) and there turned the virgin furrows in a neighborhood that still wins its bread from the soil. . The country schoolhouse was the community center of the times and here on many a festal day the Rayburn Ray-burn buggy was tied while the whole family heard the local politician's poli-tician's oratory, or attended the recitations or spelling-bees and discussed dis-cussed the latest news in the weekly editions of the Courier-Journal. Mrs, Roosevelt's Plan For U. S. 'Farmerettes' You can take the city girl out of the city but can you take the city out of the girl? That will be the problem of the Office of Civilian Defense if Mrs. Roosevelt's idea, which she discussed dis-cussed at one of her recent press conferences, goes through. The idea is to create a "land army" of women to help the farmers farm-ers handle their crops next year when male hands will probably be scarce. If an unpaid land army of volunteer women workers is created, creat-ed, Mrs. Roosevelt's idea is that the Physical Training division of the Civilian Defense organization undertake un-dertake the training of the "farmerettes." "farm-erettes." This division is headed by the famous athlete, former Olympic scull star, John Kelly. Obviously skull practice is necessary for contestants con-testants on an agricultural team. Mr. Kelly has as his assistants Alice Marble and Mary Brown, tennis stars, to say nothing of the advice and counsel of former heavyweight , champion Jack Dempsey and the famous sports writer, Grantland Rice. Undoubtedly Mr. Dempsey, who has tossed many a haymaker in his day, would be an excellent trainer far the ladies who hope to emulate Maude Muller. Grantland Rice knows his baseball. It seems logical logi-cal that if you can criticize the way a mar pitches a ball you ought to qualify to coach a lady pitching fertilizer. |
