The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-03-13

gins out to how big a check he gets from the gov- ernment in the farm of a crop loan, mortage loan, subsidy to bring his sale price up to parity, or payment for soil conservation work. The farmer either gets this check or he doesn't, and if he gets 1t, he doesn't have to worry where the morey comes from or why. All the farmer knows is that market prices being what they are, he would long since have lost his shirt if his Uncle Samuel hadn't contri- buted the difference between going broke and breaking even.
 'HUMANLY
 IMPOSSIBLE" If farmer should take sufficient interest in this bill to come to Washington when its consideration first begins and see 1t through, he'd have to give up his winter fence mending and let someone else do the feeding and milking, for he would be in for a three months stay in the capital, and 1t would take more than a government sub- sidy to keep him stabbed and bedded down, the prices of wild oats and liquid rye being what they are.
 For the House Appropriations Committee of 40 members began to consider this bill last Jan. 2. They held hearings for seven long weeks, almost every day, and in that time took testimony from Secretary of Agriculture Wickard and everyone else on down. This testimony fills 2000 pages of the solidest reading any farmer ever strained his eyes on while parking his socked feet on a base burner rail. And much of 1t would be unintelligible to a man who might know all the answers about corn borers and boil weevils, but couldn't write a law about them to save his crop.
 It even staggered some Of the congressman. When the testimony was all in. the committee took all this sap and tried to boil down to pay sugar. The result was the bill itself 100 pages in length, with an index at the pack to show where to find the work of each of the 70 or 30 Department of Agriculture bureaus which functions under the act. And in the words of Congress- man Charles H. Leavy of Spokane, Wash, member of the committee, Tt is humanly impossible for any member of Congress, or any other person, to say that they have a complete and full understanding of all the phases of this bill"
 ss,00O EMPLOYES
 IN 22 ACRES
 During the four days the bill was debated on the floor of the House, most of the debating being done by the members of the committee who did the drafting, the whole gloomy picture of the farm situation of the country was spread on the record. Congressman Everett M. Dirksen of Pekin, H., even dug back to President Roosevelts statement of March, 1883:
 We are on the way to bank
 ruptcy because governments are
 wrecked upon the rocks of loose
 fiscal policy
 And earlier statements of the 1932 campaign:
 We must repeal the law that
 compels the government to go
 into the market to purchase, to
 sell, or to speculate in farm
 products in futile attempt to
 reduce farm surpluses. .. We
 must insist that we get more ser-
 vice for the farmer for less
 money"
 Well in November, 1940, the gov- ernment had surpluses of 154 mil- lion bushels of corn, a million bushels of wheat, six million bales of cotton, and its fiscal policy in- cluded $280 million, in loans to far mers.
 The whole colossal Department of Agriculture has mushroomed so that It's 1882 expenditures of $l00 million are now $l 400 million, with 83,000 employees in 22 acres of buildings giving the farme: more and more service, but not for less money.
 The appropriation bill under dis cussion, having been passed by the House, is now before the Senate, which will get around to 1t in due course. If there is any dirt farmer in the audience who thinks he can do anything about this farm situa- ton, he might come down and tell the Senate how, before it's too late.