Evening star., 1935-09-19
Potatoes.

a hot potato" may not have arisen IN
the long-ago from the demonstrated
futility of Government control OF the
production and distribution of that
article of food, but it applies now to the
attitude of the Federal administration
in respect to the potato act OF the recent
extraordinarily busy session OF Congress.
The Secretary of Agriculture announces
that unless funds are made available
he cannot proceed to enforce the act.
The final filibuSter of the late Senator
from Louisiana choked off the specific
appropriation. The sources of mlScel-
laneous expenditures are clogged with
reouiSitiOnS. Other and even worthier
public works of Government supervision
and control are in the same fix, and the
poor potato is in bad way for the
wherewithal for New Deal manipulation.
1t would have been hard job. at the
best, to administer the potato act, the
inspiration for which has been lost in
the shuttle of the general hodge, -podge OF
the last stage of the session. 1t is OF
no particular moment who conceived the
idea of counting all the potatoes grown,
packing them in distinctive containers,
stamping them with fee symbol and
thus enriching the Treasury-and the
horde of inspectors and appraisers re-
uuired for this task-and then releasing
them to the market under formidable
ban of prohibition against the use OF
unstamped tubers. Perhaps history may
eventually record the identity of the
genius who thus broke the record for
ingenuity in the field of planned ma
tional economics. Just now the matter
is of less consequence than the reaSSur-
ance that there will be no swarm Of
potato hunters-human and not entomo-
Notwithstanding about with binoculars
and calculating machines to keep tabs
on the crop and to assure the payment
of the tax.
The fate of the potato act-passed and
signed and left to die of acute financial
I'D AAAOoO AASNASS~o
aspect in demonstration of the trial and
error plan of Government which has
been in progress during the past thirty
months. There has been no scarcity of
enterprise and ingenuity. The paths to
Washington have been trodden smooth
by the feet of those with theories, who
have been welcomed, heard and in many
cases needed, with the result of an un-
precedented volume of legislation, tre-
mendouS output of administrative orders,
the expansion of the official personnel
at the Capital by nearly hundred per
cent, and the expenditure OF several
times as much money as the taxpayers
of the country can yield under the most
severe methods OF extraction for two
generations to come.
The process of checking up on these
plans is not unreasonably slow. The
courts have taken their toll of them in
a number of decisions and more are on
the way. The potato law may yet get
to the courts, though at present it would
seem to be menaced with a natural
death through strangulation in the
cradle-it being no Hercules to master
the snakes. If it does survive this fiscal
stringency and get going, with the
potato counters hustling as only Gov
ernment field workers can hustle to
count the tubers in each hill on each
farm and each house garden, then the
country will have witnessed a great
spectacle of enlightened public admins
tration worthy of the paeanS of the most
lyric of the poets.