Evening star., 1936-08-09

a brick works in Indiana how many
bricks It could make, TO tell cotton
mill in New England how many hours
it could run. They set the hours and
wages Of labor in whole industries, re-
gardless of the working conditions or
the cost Of living in different sections.
MonopoIy's Grip frightened
By N. r. A. Operations.
Many working men thought they
would gain from the regulations Of
the N. r. A. They did not. They lost.
The Blue Eagle was no friend of the
working man. The wage and hour re-
strictions caused industry to lay of
men, not to hire them. Unemploy-
ment grew worse. Consumption was
reduced. The cost of living was in
creased. Monopoly, which takes toll
from all wage-earners, was encour-
aged. Many little shops and some very
big enterprises, struggling to keep
their men at work in a hard period,
had to close up. N. r. A. had 1900
regulations, set up by guess, to gov
ern three million employers. Hun
dreds Of thousands of industries kept
going under N. r. A. in the only way
they could, by simple violation Of the
regulations. The whole scheme was
In chaos and ruin long before the Su-
preme Court put 1t out Of its misery.
In the face Of its failures the Admin
istration tried to set up new N. r.
A. by indirection. Nobody would have
1t. The President said that to give up
the N. r. A. was unthinkable. The
people not only thought Of it: they
did it. From the day the Supreme
Court killed the N. r. A. industrial re-
covery began in the United States.
What did the administration do for
agriculture? Twenty years ago the
World War had created an unheard-
Of prosperity for agriculture. Our
farmers were called on to supply meat
and grain and cotton for large part
Of the world. Two-dollar wheat and
thirty-cent cotton were the results.
Our farmers geared their production
to this wartime demand. They
bought land on this basis They bor-
rowed money at wartime interest
rates.
A. A. A. Branded as Same
Scheme as n. r. A.
With the end OF the war this demand
for our farm products disappeared.
and with the world depression follow
ing this, our farmers were caught in
q trap. They faced bankruptcy; they
faced the loss Of their farms; they
faced eviction from their homes. Any
reasonable governmental help was
justified. The Republican administra-
ton did what it could with the re-
sources 1t had. It attempted to keep
domestic farm prices above the world
level. It extended aid to mortgaged
farmers. What did the New Deal do?
It did not stop with the measures Of
relief already begun by the Republican
administration. 1t set up an A. A. A.,
the same scheme OF regimentation for
agriculture that it had set UP for in
dustry.
They adopted the same philosophy
for agriculture as for industry, that
the way to create wealth is to destroy
1t. They adopted the idea that 6,000.-
900 farmers should begin to run their
farms by blueprints from Washing
ton statisticians. A farmer could farm
only after he had answered q half
dozen questionnaires and signed some
afidavits. They began with the
slaughter Of hogs and the plowing up
Of cotton and the suspension of the
growing Of wheat. For every acre of
cotton plowed under some other ma
tion-Brazil, or Egypt, or India
wheat destroyed some other nation
Canada, or Russia, or Argentina
planted a new acre.
Just what injury the A. A. A. did to
the American farmers and the Amer
lean citizen in general will never be
known. The costs are incalculable.
But We know some Of them. It re-
duced the employment Of farm labor
enormously. One expert says that IN
cotton alone the A. A. A. put two and
q half million people on relief. An
other estimate declares that the whole
A. A. A. threw three and half MIL
lions out Of employment. 1t reduced
the business Of the banks, the rail-
roads, the meat packers, the cotton
ginners, the makers of farm tools, and
the auto manufacturers.
Most Benefits Paid
To Tillers Of Many Acres.
Before it Is done the total cost ir
cash outlay will be about two billion
dollars. A lot Of this money has gone
to farmers having hard time anc
has been of personal benefit to these
farmers. But the little farmer die
not get very much. 1t was the big