The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-07-18
The Farm Board Has A Birthday

than the farmers would Meanwhile Hyde
and Legge are going to venture into hostile
country in the Dakotas, to try out the pro-
gram they so signally failed with in Kansas.
A more beautiful picture of the failure of
organized capitalism" could not be found in a
month of Sundays. Setting up Stabilize
ton" corporation for wheat, the Farm Board
last fall bought, according to present report,
100000 bushels at $1.15 to "peg" the price
But the Chicago price has reached 85 cents
and farmers are getting Ga cents in Kansas
and SO cents in Montana The Farmers Union
and it's boosters the renego"o Tr"'~' :"
Montana and the Dakotas who valiantly sup
ported Hoover, the Farm Boaiu, lis
operatives" Sterilization" and ALL can now
explain to those they have been swindling just
how it all happens.
Samuel McKelvie, ex-governor of Nebraska,
who is the "wheat farmers representative"
on the Farm Board, in trying to explain just
what sterilization means when the bottom
drops out of it, got off the following:
"a sterilization corporation should not be
used only to take surplus off the market
There must be reasonable proposition"
What reasonable proposition" might be,
McKelve doesn't say; doubtless he doesn't
know. But what he does know is clear: A
sterilization corporation should not be ex-
pected to stabilize anything, least of ALL
wheat.
Though McKelvie says that the government
"has not sustained loss, as it still has the
wheat"-it cannot eat that wheat, but he may
have to eat his words, as last Saturday re-
ports said that the Farm Board had sold
$4,000 bushels to Kansas flour mills for 70
cents bushel that they paid $l.15 bushel
for last Fall. Besides, Tuesday reports said
that the Farm Board shave made large sales
Co. 49, 80 o
bushels changing hands through brokers, and
100000 bushels going from Kansas City via
the Gulf.
What the price is, is carefully avoided in
the dispatch, which came from Chicago. But
how this conflicts with McKelvie's repetition
of the Farm Boards promise ito hold this
grain until the price situation has been re-
lieved," is clear as bell. Since the Agrcul
tura Department last wool w"w"ad, -" '"~-''
ers that wheat prices for the next seven years
would be lower than in the next s,,e.. ant
Farm Board holdings would have to wait a
long time.
Meanwhile Chairman Legge of the Farm
Board gives the following idea of just how
Sterilization" is working:
eve purchased 60,000,O0O bushels of wheat
because the carry-over last year was larger
than ever before. We now control more than
that increase in the American surplus from
last years carry-over It is cnstro ~ 900 900
a month OF tho t'''N" = his
wheat lin storage and wastage charges)."
According to ~ =. -, IS a
one year affair He got off the Ioi.owing
good one: @8
"The main point at issue is the determine
ton of whether a new emergency exists in
the grain market, or whether the present sit
uation is continuance of that which the Farm
Board relieved in buying the 60,00o,C0o
bushels it now holds. We haven't given the
question of sterilization of this years crop
any consideration at ALL"
In other words, "stabilization" was for 1929,
and in 1920 the farmers will have to get along
without it. McKelvie adds, as . rather bril-