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Show Farmers, Workers United In Less-Ttian-Parity Issue Seven Groups Back President on Continuing Farm Security Administration; Veteran Observers See New Trend. By BAUKIIAGE News Analyst and Commentator. VNC Service, 1343 II Street, N. W., Washington, D. C. There Is an interesting story yet to be told, behind the letter sent to the President urging htm to take to the public the issues of continuation continu-ation of the Farm Security administration adminis-tration and the sale of grains for feed below parity. The story lies in the signatures to that letter. .There were seven of them and they represented two farm organizations, three labor organizations or-ganizations and two religious groups. The combination of names, united In a single plea, marks one of the few occasions when farmer and worker found common ground on which to take a stand on policy. And some persons in Washington who are working for a closer farm-labor farm-labor alliance see in the move the beginnings of a realignment of the farm organizations, with the formation forma-tion of a new group that has at least a loose agreement with the AFL and the CIO behind it. Veteran observers who have watched agriculture and labor pull in opposite directions for many years still feel these two groups have more to disagree than to agree upon. But they admit that this time the situation was ideal for mutual logrolling. Backers of a new day in farm organizations say it is more than that. They point to significance in the signatories of the letter to the President. Presi-dent. The seven signatories of this letter were: First, James G. Patton, president of the National Farmers union, the most radical of the farm groups. This group contains more tenant farmers and fewer farm owners, than the other farm groups. It is a virile, growing outfit. Second, Murray Lincoln, executive execu-tive secretary of the Ohio Farm Bureau Bu-reau Federation of Ohio. The Farm Bureau federation is not a left-wing organization. Its President O'Neal is opposed to selling grain below parity. But Mr. Lincoln, head of rthe Ohio Farm bureau' units, has a mind of his own. He runs buying ' co-operatives in the country. He is very consumer-minded. The next signature is that of William Wil-liam Green, president of the American Amer-ican Federation of Labor, and the next Phillip Murray, head of the CIO. The fifth of this group is J. G. Luhrsen, executive secretary of the American Railway Labor Executives Execu-tives association. The religious groups are headed by L. G. Ligutti, executive secretary secre-tary of the National Catholic Rural Life association, and Benson Landis of the Federal Council of Churches. Those who don't know the whole story behind efforts to realign the farm organizations see only the surface sur-face reasons why all the organizations organiza-tions represented by the above names were willing to support the issues mentioned in the petition. . The tenant farmer who is ambitious am-bitious wants to own his own farm. He sees in the Farm Security administration ad-ministration an aid to that end. He considers this help a substitute for the vanished frontiers the days when a man with a strong will, a willing wife and a sharp axe could cut a new home out of the wilderness wilder-ness to which the government was glad to hand him the deed. Cheaper Food This concept concerns labor less directly but the question of cheaper food concerns him considerably. The argument for sale of grain below parity is that it is necessary to keep dairy and meat products prices down and the Farmers union claims that opposition to Farm Security comes from "interests solely committed com-mitted to the high-price-through-scarcity concept" which of course is the opposite of labor's platform. Those are the obvious and immediate imme-diate reasons why the signature of two of the country's leading labor leaders rest among the seven. The religious organizations have the family and general welfare in mind of course. But there may be another reason why Mr. Murray and Mr. Green signed up, and why their one-time colleague, John Lewis, didn't. The story of the part Mr. Lewis didn't play is closely connected with the effort to create a new farm organization organ-ization which will have the blessing of labor. This is what happened. John Lewis, head of the powerful United Mine Workers of America, as you all know, has been trying to organize organ-ize farm labor. He has made some progress under the so-called District Dis-trict 50 of his union in signing up hands in the dairy industry. But he has encountered obstacles of all kinds among farmers who are all potential employers and capitalists capital-ists at heart. If he could only get some really respectable farm organization, organ-ization, or a man connected with some such organization to take up his banner it would help. He settled on the Farmers union not because of the name for it is not a union at all in the sense labor employs the word. But because it was left-of-center and had an aggressive ag-gressive president. Through negotiators negoti-ators he made an offer to Mr. Pat-ton Pat-ton something like this: "Fall down and worship me, get your organization to stand behind my District 50 drive and here is a million dollars to play with." Mr. Patton's answer was "no." But that move made Messrs. Murray and Green very Patton-conscious. Patton-conscious. It also called the attention atten-tion of other up-and-comers with a left-of-center inclination to the possibilities pos-sibilities of developing an organization organi-zation which without in any way getting get-ting under the direct influence of a union labor movement such as Lewis', might work out a practical working agreement for pooling common com-mon interests. Whether this is a practical idea will be revealed by the amount of activity the labor whips show when farm issues are up in the next months whether this is just another anoth-er temporary log-rolling alliance which has made stranger bedfellows before, or whether it has the basis of a more permanent working agreement. agree-ment. Times are changing. It's worth watching. 'Victory Pig Clubs' Prove Successful A prominent former Washing-tonian, Washing-tonian, who moved to Kansas City with his cohorts in order to make room for war workers, was in the capital on business recently. He is A. D. Black, head of the Farm Credit Cred-it administration. He was full of the story of the "Victory Pig." He said the Victory Pig movement, move-ment, which is getting a good start in the South, promises to spread into the northern states. The first Victory Pig auction was held at Jonesboro, Ark., recently and the farmers and farmer boys who signed up to deliver pigs were paid in war bonds and stamps. The cry of the auctioneer worked prices up to $15.30 per hundred pounds, and that was more than top hogs were bringing on either the Memphis or St. Louis market. The idea was hatched by the secretary sec-retary of the local Production Credit Cred-it association. He held a contest, offering $5 for the best name for the plan and so the Victory Pig club was born. The local chamber of commerce com-merce joined with the association and the whole countryside soon was feeding pigs to trade for war bonds. This, in spite of the fact that this agricultural county, Craighead, had signed up for $600,000 in bonds in the last 12 months. Although Jonesboro claims ' to have held the first auction, Quitman, Ga., boasts of the organization of the first Victory Pig club. Many of these auctions will be held this fall prior to the date when Secretary Wickard says there is likely to be a bottleneck in hogs. By this he means that there has been so many million more hogs raised this year than normally it is going to tax both transportation facilities and the capacity of packing pack-ing houses. The secretary is urging farmers not to try to market too many hogs between Thanksgiving day and Washington's birthday, which is the time of the year when the pack is ordinarily particularly heavy. More accidents happen to farm people than to any other class of workers, and in wartime accident rates usually rise sharply. Careless use of the tractor and other farm machinery causes 29 out of every 100 farm accidents. |
