Askov American. [volume] (Askov, Pine County, Minn.) 1914-current, 1942-10-01
Fact And Opinion
Thus Spake Clapper.
By E. C. Stengelsen.

Thus Spake Clapper.
Raymond Clapper is an eastern
newspaper writer whose column ap-
pears widely in the metropolitan
press. These last days he has been
looking with gloomy apprehension at
Congress attempt to fix a ceiling on
farm prices several points higher
than the levels Mr.. Roosevelt has
decided upon.
He has reached the somber con-
clusion that it foreshadows a break
down of legislative government and
the opening of the door to ultimate
dictatorship. He says in part:
Congress is not legislating, it is
carrying out the orders of a hand
full of farm lobbyists who hover
around the halls at the capitol and
give orders"
ITO see this happening at a crit
ical time like this is an appalling
event which sends shudder through
your frame if you want to keep this
democracy"
have singled out Clapper's COM
ment because it illustrates, more
wildly than others I have read, eff
fete eastern opinion on a problem
on which it seems abysmally ignor-
ant.
I question the soundness of his
analysis because he rests his whole
case on a premise which may be en-
tirely wrong. He seems to miss the
real point. I think it must be con-
coded that his entire line of reason
ing collapses if it can be shown that
on the question of farm prices, Con-
gress is more nearly right than Mr.
Roosevelt.
Most of our legislators are from
the farm sections. l know a good
many of them personally; and this
acquaintance leads me to believe
that they have been influenced more
by sense of right and wrong than
by fear of the 'voracious" farm
lobby
But admittedly they are of the
minority party. AS to the Demo-
cratic majority, I can truthfully say
that at no time within my memory
have we had a Congress which in
spinelessness and supine obedience
to one man has fallen so low as that
with which the country has been
afflicted since 1888
But to commit the injustice against
the farm folk that Mr.. Roosevelt
demands (and of which Mr.. Clapper
seems emphatically to approve) was
apparently more than even this most
spineless of Congresses could bring
itself to do. And so it called upon
one of its few remaining shreds of
self-respect and rose in protest.
I see Congress behavior in an
entirely different light than does Mr..
Clapper 1 see it, not as an abject
surrender to the farm lobby, but as
long overdue stiffening of the
Congressional back against executive
domination.
Quite the contrary of being step
toward dictatorship, 1 see it as a
step in the opposite direction. There
has never been time in our his
tory when some particular group
did not exercise undue influence
the industrial northeast during the
Civil war, the great corporations and
trusts of the expansion era, more re-
Gently organized labor. It has not
brought dictatorship.
There is far more to be feared
from some single individual vested
with excessive power, particularly if
he is possessed of an Unsuitable am
bition and is INSCRIPTIONS in the use
of his power. For this reason I, like
many other Americans, view with
satisfaction rather than with alarm,
Congress defiance of Mr.. Roosevelt.
Our farm population is about 80
millions, or % per cent of the whole.
It's income is estimated this year at
net of 10 billions as against the
national total of 112 billions. It
will thus be seen that % per cent
VI Ids 1888 tIldfl IL
per cent of the income.
Industrial workers have had a
wage increase of 113 per cent over
the 1935-1939 period. Their living
costs have, however, advanced only
16 per cent. This is due, largely,
to disproportionately low farm prices
Food requirements take only % per
cent of the workers income
One hundred per cent of parity
or ITO per cent-or any other figure
is purely hypothetical. They are
based on conceptions which are large
ly impractical. To give the farmer
economic equality might call for $50
per cent-or even 200 per cent. To
show how unreliable these figures
are, let me say that farm prices,
today, are lot per cent of this myth
ical parity. 1t sounds big. We go
deeper and discover that it is made
up in considerable measure of the
L IL = =