The Washington times., 1923-11-06
WHEAT FARMER
To OBJECT To f.
j. 5. HELP
Hard Sees Cooperative Move
Observation-Disclosures Grain
Buying Plan.
By WILLIAM HARD.

DJ VNAAAMf&&M HAM,
With the presentation to the
President of the report on the
wheat situation by Eugene Meyer.
jr., and Frank W., Mondell of the
United States War Finance Corpo-
ration it Is widely believed here
that all plans by Secretary OF Ag-
riculture Wallace for a whsat-buy-
ing and wheat surplus exporting
corporation are lying on the floor an.
conscious and win have great diff
Guilty getting up again to their feet
before the referee counts them out.
The political strategy of the mat
ter ID that theN great and growing
cooperative movement, which has
touched the imagination and fired
American farmers, has been sum.
moned into play by Meyer and Mon
dell and Ex-Governor Lowden OF
Illinois to fight the Governmental
wheat-buying plans, which, It is
shown, would check and slow down
the cooperative movement.
Influence OF Societies.
If a farmer could sell to the
Government at q stabilized profit
able price there would be no reason
operative society. Such societies,
however, in cotton and In tobacco
and In certain fruits and in certain
vegetables and In milk and also to
some degree II: wheat itself, have
become q powerful element in agri.
cultural life and also in national
politics.
The tour made through the north
west by Meyer and Mondell and
the organizing work now being
done there by Ex-Governor Lowden,
have had two econornio and political
results of primaryS Importance.
The first is that considerable
numbers Of bankers and other bust,
ness men who hav4 beer holding
off from the farmerF cooperative
movement II. ths northwest have
now been persuaded to go in with
it and to lend ii their active prac-
tical financing support.
u. s. Buying A Blow.
The second result is that the CO.
operative movement has been shown
that Governmental buying OF wheat
would be q shrewc and heavy blow
to its future prospeeSs Even now
IL is difficult enough to keep a
cooperative society WITHOUT slipping
over into the market or his own
account to make temporary ex
ceptional profits With the Govern
mept standing ready to buy his
product from him at a satisfactory
price his cooperative society would
become for hin-so it is claimed
either a mere form or a discarded
memory.
This claim gets human corrobora-
ton from the discovery that the
best known plan for governmental
wheat buying and governmental
wheat. surplus-ex has been
actively promoted by Industrial in
terests which are known to have
a record OF earnest opposition to
the cooperative movement.
It has also become known that
the grain spectators OF Minneapolis
and the Northwest are filled not SO
much with any dread of govern.
mental grain buying, which they
know would be temporary. as they
are with q fear and horror of see
ing the control of wheat-marketing
go by cooperation into the hands of
the farmers themselves. which they
know would be permanent.
Spectators Hit Meyer.
The grain spectators accordingly
have joined themselves to certain
perfectly conscientious radical"
statements in making vigorous and
violent attacks upon Eugene Meyer,
jr., and his wheat policy.
A strange and stubborn fight has
thereupon been in progress behind
h0 hafEUoan MONar al
with the cooperative idea. and Sec
rotary OF Agriculture Wallace, armed
with the idea of a governmental
wheat-buying corporation and aided
without his wish by radicals" who
were shooting at Meyer for not
wanting the Government in the
wheat business and by grain specu-
lators who were shooting at him for
wanting the wheat business to be in
the, hands of the farmers.
The inwardness of the move
then made by Meyer-a move which
wheat question ultimately and to
remove It from It's present i'm
mersion in politics-is that he
private finance to
abandon It's relative alooeness from
the cooperative movement in the
northwest and to give in that
region the same sympathetic as
sistance which In the States of the
South it is already giving it with
Meyers encouragement as manag-
ing director Of the United States
War Finance Corporation.
Meyer Did 1t In Cotton.
What Meyer did in the South TO-
ward inducing bankers to promote
cooperation by farmers in cotton
and in tobacco and in other South
ern products he has now got well
on his way toward doing in the
Northwest on behalf OF wheat. The
trick of the matter has Eeen that
Meyer has married private banking
finance to private cooperative
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