The Bismarck tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, N.D.) 1916-current, 1928-05-28
Editorial Comment
The Farm Veto
Chicago Tribune)

President Coolidge's veto of the McNary-
Haugen bill was expected. The points on which
it was disapproved were those which he had
been expected to raise against it. The Presi-
dent agrees with his legal advisers that the
bill would be an unconstitutional act and he re-
states his conviction that it's operations would
be contrary to economics and natural law. He
is opposed to the bureaucracy it would require
for its working. to its attempt to fix prices and
it's method of dispOsing of a surplus.
In one respect the veto message was strange
Ito Mr.. Coolidges usual temperament His
ordinary habit does not include such vigorous
rhetoric and his normal style does not contain
so many adjectives and so many incisive
phrases. This may indicate an out of the Or
binary conviction or collaboration, or BOTH The
farmer is likely to feel that he has been the
occasion of some unusually emphatic language
That may not be all he will feel.
! An assumption that all the agricultural re-
gions were for this bill would be wrong. There
were farmers who had no confidence in it.
There were others who thought that as an ex-
pertinent it would indicate that agriculture was
given industries. There were others who were
convinced that the bill represented their
economic independence and that it proposed
little more than workable farm equivalent of
the tariff.
1t may not have been altogether fortunate
that the President in celebrating upon the
economic fallaces of the bill used language
which free trader might have applied to the
tariff with hardly any change of word or
phrase, as for instance: incidentally this taxa
| ton or fee would not be for any purpose of
revenue in the accepted sense but would simply
| yield subsidy for the special benefit of par
ticular groups of professors and exporters. It
would be a consumption or sales tax on the
vital necessities of life, regulated not by the
of fhn 70 h,,f fh0
requirements and export losses of various trad
| ing Intermediates" .
! We who believe that the tariff is a necessary
bulwark of American industrial life cannot well
give this reasoning to agriculture in denial of
a similar price increase The President was
clearer of controversy when he was insisting
that the bill not only was unconstitutional but
that the plan would not work because of supe-
rior natural laws.
! Although there was hint of encouragement
in the veto message that farm relief was not
gone out of possibility for this session, it is
assumed that the chances are against any form
of it, and agriculture may have to observe the
fact that again it is where it started. It is q
year of political consequences and here the
question is just what they will be. The north
| ern farmer is Republican for the most part.
Ever since the civil war the Republican party,
an industrial party, has held agriculture, which
has been an achievement. Generally planters
and industrialists do not run together political
| ly. The early controversies of agriculture and
industry had all the germs of secession The
natural alliance of farms with free trade has
not found it's place in northern American
politics since the war and now the Democrats
are in fact hardly anti-tariff enough to count
As the Republican farmers feel that eastern
industrial Republicanism is Indifferent to them
or against them, they probably will be against
all its elements in the national convention. That
will include Mr.. Hoover. After the conventions
they may find that if they are to carry their
opposition into the election they must be for
an eastern, urban Democrat and wet, Mr.
Smith. The city, the east, and to most of the
farmers, the wrong side of the prohibition ques-
ton. In that case revolt from the party will
not be so easy. Otherwise with wet Demo-
crat making things lively in the cities and in
dustrial communities and Republican farmers
backing away from their party in the dry rural
districts and states the election might, and in.
deed it may, be run for anybody's money.