The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1927-current, 1937-07-26
NEWSPAPERS OPINIONS
THE CEREMONIAL FARM PROBLEM

America would hardly seem normal without a
farm problem. 1t has had one of some sort during
most of the colonial era. 1t had one after the
Revolutionary war; 1t had one in the time of An
drew Jackson, in the time of the Grange agitation
of the eighties, and has had one most of the time
since the World war.
That is not to imply any futility of attempts at
solutions, for the problem has not always been the
same problem, various phases of 1t have been
solved, and through continual effort to key the
progress has been found.
II is not often the farmer has received such a
range of attention from congress in the present
session The intensity of the attention has not been
so great perhaps as at other periods, as when
the Farm Board was set up or the AAA inaugural
ed Nor is there great deal of certainty about all
the remedies now being proposed.
But the territory taken in by the legislative
measure introduced the other day by Marvin Jones,
chairman of the House of Representatives Commit
tee on Agriculture, fairly entities it to be called
the Omnibus Farm BILL And beside it there have
been passed the Farm Tenancy bill and the con-
tinuation of reduced Federal Land Bank interest
rates.
Considering that all this for the most part has
been mere rumble in the background of the more
highly pitched orchestration of the Supreme Court
fight, the wage-and-hour bill discussion and the
plans of administrative reorganization, one Won
ders whether the crop loan and ever-norma gran
airy plans in the Jones bill have had the thorough
popular discussion and examination that would war
rant their passage in what remains of a now I'M
patient session. The fact that the committee chair
mans measure is much milder in its crop control
features than the earlier advanced by the
Farm Bureau Federation with the approval of the
Secretary of Agriculture is indication that over
whelming public demand has been found for I'M
mediate enactment in the farm states. ..
The ever-normal granary plan is an appealing
one and has eogent arguments to commend 1t II
proof can be adduced that there is reasonable pros
peet of its stopping at normal The history of val
orization schemes is that wherever there has been
effort to support prices political pressure has
insisted on a continued accumulation of commodi-
ties until there has been eventual crash.
If the pending bill provided for purchasing only
enough to maintain normal carryover of grains
and no more that would be the thing. Where 1t
goes further is in the provision for the purchase of
grain toward calculating the parity price 1t is
true that this is backed, it has not been before
in the United States, by crop control provisions
now dressed up in soil conservation garments
But it is anybody,s guess whether the penalties
in the Jones biil-eonsisting merely of being cut
of soil conservation benefits and the crop loan
facities--wouid effectively halt an agricultural
BOOM And there is little willingness to apply the
prohbitve marketing tax on SURPRISES as proposed
in the Farm Bureau bill. , -... ..,
Under the circumstances it would seem that
thought late as is the session. the agriculture COM
mittee will do well to hold hearings on the Jones
bill in order that these questions and the probab-
ties involved in them may be threshed out A bet
ter public understanding of them would make a
better basis for legislation-The Christian Science
Monitor. zee. ..- 60. ....