The people's voice., 1944-01-28

| am writing this letter from the
in a farming community who has
bought and distributed food for rs
years; has been faced with debts and
mortgages has been tormented with
the implications. of modern finance
and with the confusion and restric-
tions that every business man is faced
with at this time In short, l am a
typical small town, practical business
man, and am, as things go, successful.
Since Pearl Harbor, l have had
practical first hand experience with
the various federal food plans. My
experience, together with what time /
have had to study this masterpiece of
bureaucratic maladministration has
been limited, undoubtedly, but l be-
lieve my views and my conclusions
would represent fairly good cross
section opinion of what practical busi-
nessmen think of the administration
of the War Food Program in Mon
tana.
The War Food Administration
started in Washington with high
ideals and fine motives. The program
intended basically to really do some
thing beneficial for the consumer, food
distributor, and producer by enforce
ment of the program with the powers
delegated it by congress.
During the first few months of its
organization the War Food Admins
traion held forth great promise. the
program within each state was to be
administered by practical business
men, food distributors, and producers
within the state and within the coun-
ties.
After this program was nicely
launched new Food Administration
was appointed in Washington. This
administration Immediately surround
ed itself with people who had never
had a day of practical business ex-
perience. This group was taken from
the Public Welfare Department whose
work had consisted mainly in dis |
tributing surplus commodities to Re-
lief and Old Age pensioners, and were
primarily concerned with school lunch |
programs. This group formed a nu-
cleus of a bureaucracy that was to |
penetrate down into every regional |
district and through the regional ad-
ministrators to every state and every
community.
In the state, district, and county |
set-ups, practical business men and |
producers, who had made a living by
years of experience in distributing
food stuffs and were part of the Amer
lean economy, were systemically elm
mated from voice in the set-up and
became a group of mere listeners for
small fry bureaucras who were ex-
perts on theory" A we'll known
scholar has said, Practice without i.
theory is blind; theory without prac-
tice is barren"
The proof of these statements is
to be found today in the barren and
sterile action of the FDA in Montana
The FDA is an agency of the War
Food Administration
In Montana we have a director of |,
the FDA imported from another state
where he had minor position with
the Public Welfare Department. To
date organized business, slaughterers,
stockmen, or bakeries have not been
able to obtain direct answer to any
of their problems, inquiries, and ap-
peals. The answer invariably is, "I'll
get the information for you" We, as
wish to comply with reg
ulations, and would comply if we
knew what was required. We are get
ting tired of evasive answers We t
are getting tired of being threatened. S
We are getting tired of bending our
knees to these petty, Impractical bu- a
reaucrats. We are getting tired of I
depending on the generosity of these h
Z
In my opinion, the weakness of the
whole FDA set-up lies in the types S
of go-between representatives that g
have been chosen for state directors n