The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-04-05

of increased parity payments"
 When the President disapproved House farm leaders passed the bill for the next fiscal year with 2 total appropriation of 4eo0y yO00, ,0Ot
 This the Senate proceeded to ur by a mere $450, ,000,000
 Farm aid, as now on the books consists of several things:
 1. Payments for soil conserv. ing: letting ground lie fallow os planting 1t in crops which will re- store its productivity, but defi- nitely not planting 1t in wheat cotton or corn.
 3. Crop loans: giving farmers money on their crops of wheat cotton, corn, rice and tobacco then storing the surplus because no one has figured what else to do with 1t.
 3. Purchase of surplus acqui- sition of uninarketable foods which are disposed of through the Sur plus Commodities Corporation stamp plan.
 1. Parity payments.
 THIS GETS
 COMPLICATED
 Crux of the whole business Is the item of parity payments, and to say that 1t would take @ Moscow law yer, two agents of the Gestapo and Albert Einstein to got to the bottom of this one puts its mildly.
 A parity payment, in case you have forgotten and wish to paste the information in your hat, is "tle price which will give to the commodity a purchasing power with respect to articles that farm. CTS buy, equivalent to the pur. chasing power of such commodi- ties in the base period" which is August, 1909, to July 1914.
 This is what will keep the Mos- COW lawyer busy for Q time, and Einstcin will come in on the for. mula for computing a parity price:
 Parity price equals B times I, divided by 100, in which "B" is the base price of the commodity In the halcyon days of i909.19i4, and T" is the index number of prices paid by farmers for the things, farmers buy, including in- terest on debst, their taxes and freight rates. Department of Ag- riculture economists figure out this index number. Please Do Not Disturb.
 Putting the two agents of the Gestapo to work and trying to find the why's, wherefores and merits. If any, for all this, the need for parity payments Is based on points like these:
 Tn 1o09-l4, the price of i've. foot moving machine was around $47. In 1940 1t was around $97. That Is illustrative of the way prices have advanced on the things farmers buy, but 1t is offset to Q degree by the fact that farmer today gets @ much better auto mobile for $l,o00 than he did for 5000 90 years ago.
 All these things are taken into consideration, however, in deter mining the index number on prices the farmers pay, and the computation shows that for 6 given bill of goods, @ farmer today would have to pay $l28 for what would have cost him only $l00 in 1009-14.
 BEATS FLOWING
 Against this, the prices which farmers received for the crops they raised have been generally lower than they were in the base period 1909-14 Grain and cotton have been running only 30 per cent of pre- 1914 levels. Considering the prices farmers get have been 20 points un- der, while prices farmers paid have been 28 points over the pre-l9l4 base levels. you have the main argu- ments of the case that the farmer has not been getting his share. That share, incidentally, was about five billion dollars last year, or 2 per cent of the total. Tn 1914 1t was IA per cent of the total.
 Furthermore, the farm argument is that the farmer doesn't get his share when his income is compared with that of others. Farmers, work ing 100 hours a week, have an aver- age income of under $l4 a week while plumbers. for instance. aver- aging a 38-hour week, have a wage ratc of $58 6 week. The point over- looked is that all plumbers weren't working all the time to make these fancy wages.
 All these arguments, however will be knocked into c grave if the price increases on grain, sweeping in like lion at the end of March hold firm or go higher. Int 1909-l4 average price for wheat for instance, was 88 cents plus Wheat at 90 cents means the "par. ity" price level has been passed
 Some other items are already we'll over the 1909-14 averages Dairy products are l 6per cen above pre-war prices. Truck price are 34 per cent above. Meat price 29 per cent. The average of al farm prices is now 3 per cen above the le09-l4 average. With an upward price trend there would seem to be ampl' grounds for cutting the farm ak program from the Senate levels Politics being what 1t is, however and with the tendency for every body to get his'n, you can bet you l evelashas that little clit will b