Evening star., 1937-10-06
Crop Control.

President Roosevelt is coming back to
Washington intent upon having crop
control legislation enacted. In North
Dakota he expressed his criticism of the
Supreme Court for holding the original
crop control law the old A. A. A. uncon-
stitutional. BY inference, he criticized
Congress because it failed. before it ad-
journed in August, to put through the
new crop control bill.
Crop control legislation, of the Roose-
velt variety, calls for the payment of
farmers for refraining from producing.
Most OF the Roosevelt proposals call for
handout of some kind, for the ex-
penditure of money taken from the
people in taxation. And so it is with
crop control, and so it was with the
old A. A. A.. when the farmers were paid
so much a head for not producing pigs,
so much an acre for not producing wheat
or cotton or tobacco and so on down the
line. The crop that Mr.. Roosevelt was
able to produce through this expendi-
ture of Government money was a crop
of votes for himself and the New Deal.
The production of any crop, the Presi-
dent said in his North Dakota speech,
is like the production of any widely used
manufactured article. He took shoes as
an example. If the American manufac-
turers Of shoes should persist in produc-
ing shoes, with their factories running
three shifts, the market would be glut-
ted with shoes, he said. OF course, they
would. The President, however, did not
say that the Government was not pay
ing the shoe manufacturers for not max
ing shoes, nor paying the workers in
the shoe factories for not making shoes.
How many farmers would join in the
crop control program which the Presi-
dent desires if the Government did not
pay them for doing SO? That is a ques-
ton. And yet it is urged by the Presi-
dent and others that it is because of crop
control and only through crop control
that prices Of the farmers commodities
can be kept up above the cost of pro-
duction. The contention of the ad-
ministration apparently is that the
American farmer is dumb kluck" who
does not see, first, that overproduction
is ruinous and second, that curtailment
of crops lis advisable to prevent over
production-unless he gets paid for cur
tailment.
Who is going to pay the bill for the
crop control program? Why the Amer
lean people, of course-not Mr.. Roose-
welt. They are going to pay twice over,
or maybe three times. They are going
to pay in higher prices for food. Surely
the prices of food today are high enough,
as many housewife can testify. They
are going to pay in taxes taken out Of
their pockets by Mr.. Roosevelt and his
New Deal administration. The taxes
may be concealed, they may be the
Governments sales taxes, which Mr..
Roosevelt and others seek to disguise as
excise taxes. But the people, all the
people are going to pay these taxes.
Mr.. Roosevelt and his administration
are boasting today that the Government
revenues are going up. Something like
billion and quarter dollars more is
being taken from the people and ex-
pended by the administration. It seems
a strange boast and one that will not
be appreciated by those who have to
pay more for nearly everything they buy.
Control of production is just another
way of saying curtailment of production.
Curtailment of production means cur
tailment Of the production of wealth.
1t is an effort, on the part of the ad-
ministration, to create wealth by not
producing. It sounds like something out
of Alice in Wonderland" In the end
the country will be the poorer and the
people, too. In the meantime the crop
OF New Deal votes may be increased.