Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1944-11-14


it may mean LEVEL Msfstt.
that farmers finally are beginning
to identify their special interest
with the national interest. It may
mean that they are beginning to
question the kind of leadership they
have had from such organizations
as the Farm Bureau Federation, the
Grange, the National Cooperative
Milk Producers Federation and the
National Council of Farmer Co.
operatives.
BY the same token the lobbyists
for those organizations may find the
reconvening Congress less receptive
to their ideas; they may find that
the old farm bloc amt what it used
to be.
The rural regions of the United
States have worn an aspect of pros
perity In recent years. New paint
on the barns - and the houses.
Fences in repair. Good roads to
market. Automobiles. Tractors. AIDE
ouate farm machinery. Mortgages
In good shape, if not paid off. Sons
and daughters in school.
All This and Heaven, Too.
Much of this had come to pass
even before the wars demand for
farm products had brought the
farmer to his present unprecedented
prosperity. And yet the farmer was
the first to respond to the suggestion
that it's time for a change All
this and heaven, too," seemed to be
the farmers slogan, his idea of
heaven being a country in which
there was no price control-or at
least no control over the prices of
what he had to sell. The farmer,
convinced, not without some reason,
that he always had got the worst of
1t in normal times, felt that he
should be permitted to even things
up in the abnormal times of war.
Let prices rise to their natural
level in the open market" he said,
or allowed it to be said for him by
Ed ONeal, Albert Goss, Charles
Holman and Ezra Benson, leaders.
respectively, of the organizations
named above. When you talked to
farmer or farm leader" about
the dangers of imitation, he'd tell
you that the way to handle that
problem was to hold down wages or
even, as ONeal suggested, to cut
wages. The farmer looked on or
ganized labor as his natural enemy.
1t wasn't bad politics on the part
OF the Republicans, so far as the
farm votes were concerned. to make
Sidney Hillman and labor the big
issue. They knew it would take
more than one campaign for Mr.
Hillman to sell to the farmers his
idea that full employment at good
wages offers the farmer a better
market than partial employment at
low wages.
Returns from the farm States in
dicate, however, that this idea may
be gaining ground. One farm or
ganization, the National Farmers
Union, headed by Jim Patton, has
taken 1t up and pressed it rather
vigorously. This organization also
has supported price control, cou-
ping such control with Government
support of prices If and when the
bottom falls out of the wartime
market.
Strong in Northwest.
The Farmers Union is relatively
strong in Montana. Oklahoma, Min
nesota, North Dakota and Wiscon-
sin, States that gave Mr.. Roosevelt
a bigger vote than had been fore
cast.
During the winter months there
is not much he can do outdoors and
the farmer does a lot of reading
and thinking. He may come up next
spring with some new answers to
his old problems. This can happen
if he selects his reading matter with
care, giving consideration to the
authorship. The periodical of largest
circulation among farmers is now
said to be the Farm Journal. An
other of large circulation in the
country towns is the Pathfinder.
These happen to be owned and pub