Imperial Valley press., 1941-02-02
BY RALPH ii. TAYLOR
Executive Secretary, Agricultural
Council of California;


The federal governments Food
Stamp plan. which was inaugurated
to cope with the paradoxical prob
lem of want in a land of plenty,
may be vastly expanded during
l941, according to reports received
from Washington.
Launched just 18 months ago, the
Federal Stamp Plan is said to have
operated with fair degree of ef-
fectiveness, with the stamps being
used by more than 2,500,0O0 persons
in POP areas. By spring, it is con-
templated, the plan will be in effect
in between $50 and 300 areas.
The proposal that the program be
greatly expanded, which is now
pending in Washington, originated
with the U. S. Department of Agri-
culture, and is designed to bring
increased benefits to both farmers,
who are plagued with crop surpluses,
and to loW-income consumers, who
have been forced to live on mini
mum-subsistance budgets.
The tentative plan calls for pro-
gram which would cost a billion
dollars year, with extension OF
the Food Stamp program to all per-
sons who rate public assistance of
any kind, and also to employed
families in cities and towns of over
$500 population whose annual in
comes fall below $1,000.
1t is estimated by sponsors of the
expanded program that it would
boost farm income at least $500, ,000,-
600 a year, and possibly as much
as $1,l00,000,0O0, and it is hoped
that many farm surpluses would
be slowly but surely wiped out. The
extent of the benefit to the pro-
ducer, however, would depend upon
how many of the new eligibles made
use of the stamps.
If the expanded program is
launched, advices from the national
capital indicate that certain soil
conserving commodities may be in
cluded in the blue-stamp list to
spur farmers to produce those items
instead of surplus and soil-depleting
crops.
The Food Stamp Plan, as it now
operates, is worked out on the basis
of a dollar allowance for
food for each person on relief, but
persons on other forms of charity
are permitted to participate, too.
The client, if he desires, can buy
a dollars worth of orange stamps
and is then given soc in blue stamps.
With the orange stamps the re-
lief client can purchase from his
grocer any food he wants. With the
blue stamps he can buy only sur
plus foods specified by the De-
partment of Agriculture. Foods OBJ
tainable with the blue stamps vary
according to season and locality,
but in California at the present
time the following items are on
the list: butter, raisins, rice. pork,
lard, corn meal, white potatoes, or
anges, apples, pears, grapefruit, cab
bage, onions, eggs, dried prunes,
hominy, beans, wheat and graham
flour.
Whether the Food Stamp Plan
would work as successfully on a
broad billion dollar scale, as it has
on the somewhat limited program
now in effect, only experience can
determine, in all probability. The
drop in relief rolls, incident to the
Jump in employment occasioned by
the national defense program, maJ
reduce the number of persons elig-
ible under the plan, for example.
1He program is exceedingly COM
plicated-and at best there are in
equalities in its application. Even
if extended TO the whole country
on the basis Indicated, hard-pressed,
independent men and women who
are living on their own savings until
they can find employment, and
people who are being cared for by
relatives who themselves have linn
tied incomes, will not share in the
benefits of the program. On the
other hand, they will be compelled
to pay their share of the cost OF
the benefits doled out to others
Similar inequalities must also re-
suit from the arbitrary exclusion