The Waterbury Democrat., 1937-04-19

~@AAS INV AeAS A VI N0OAh
 Protection or Security of
 Tenure After Purchase.
 Washington, April 19. = Congress apparently has very little enthuSi- asm for a lasting solution of farm tenancy evils.
 That's why it has been easy for big-owners of farm land, strategic ally placed on the House Agriculture committee, to torpedo - at least temporarily the administration first feeble nibble at the problem presented by growing army of farm tenants and Sharecroppers, which includes 1,900,0O0 families in the south alone.
 The committee decided on a "com- promise" measure which would provide $50,000,000 for loans to ten- ants who want to buy farms. That compromise also leaves such ten ants free to revert to tenancy by selling their equities, by letting their farms go to ruin or by getting into debt. Attempts were made to cut the fifty millions to a smaller sum.
 The Compromise" takes the place of plan which would have provided for supervision and safeguards designed to preserve security of tenure for tenants who might become landowners. This plan called for purchase and sale of land by the government.
 Tenants would have been given from 20 to 40 years to amortize, and titles woul dnot have passed in less than 20 years. Meanwhile, federal agency would have super yised the farming. seeing to 1t that the soil was protected and farms kept up.
 However, paternalistic this may have seemed, nearly everyone who had studied the sharecropper problem intensively and sympa- thetically was favoring it as the only practical method of approach to an acute condition of misery, pov- erty and squalor.
 Three Especially Vehement
 The committee at first voted by a narrow margin to throw the whole plan out. Asked to reconsider, the committee stood 12 to 12 on the second vote.
 Three members were especially vehement in opposition to the gov- ernment purchase lease = sale plan and are given credit for kill ing 1t. They were:
 Congressman Richard M. Kle- berg of Texas, part owner of the King ranch, largest ranch in the world and twice as big as the state of Rhode Island.
 Confressman Harry B. Coffee of Nebraska, president of the Coffee Cattle Co.,, which has ex- tenSive ranch holdings and owner and operator of several farms.
 Congressman Hampton F. Ful- mer of South Carolina, proprietor of the big Barnes farm in Orange burg county.
 Six of the seven Republican members laSo voted against the administration program, proposed by Chairman Marvin Jones. Op- ponents said they didn't want the government in the real estate bus iness."
 'Use Not Abuse"
 The Presidents Committee on Farm Tenancy had pointed out that there was always danger that farmers, after being given pur- chase contract, might be induced by rise in land values to pay off the loan to obtain deed, tEen sell all or part at g profit. Land speculators might aid them finan- cially to do this.
 "The contract should require the purchaser to maintain build- ings, fences and other structures in good condition" said the con- mittee, "tocarry on trpe of farm ing that will maintain the fertility of the soil and to avoid other forms of unnecessary wastage U. yet the purchaser is assured a right to use (but not abuse) the land at low annual cost to accumulate an equity and dispose of it at current ap- praised value, subject to exercise by the government of its right 10 repurchase."