The President Must Decide
THE PRESIDENT MUST DECIDE ^T^HE reports of congressional debating about farm J_ relief are not convincing or consoling reading. One suspects a desire to force the President into a corner by...
...If he is advised to perfect a system of cooperative buying and selling, he can justly retort that his industrial competitors were never asked to depend upon anything of that sort...
...and so Representative Burtness of North Dakota was perfectly correct when he stated recently: "Today, agricultural products in their relation to non-agricultural products stand 20 percent below normal...
...If the complex problem could be disposed of by the simple expedient of setting up complicated machinery, there might be some hope of resultant profit for the farmer...
...Unfortunately for Mr...
...But of those regulations which are at its disposal, the government is the sole arbiter and can be held accountable...
...Why not, therefore, follow suit and challenge the administration...
...and all the while Washington, in the grip of electoral terrors, has been staring back helplessly at them...
...one knows that political anxiety is the real reason why that bill has come to the fore again...
...Even an American cannot help relishing just a little the semi-ironical reply sent by Aristide Briand...
...The same kind of canny battling which has been going on about agricultural relief has characterized other adventures in the domain of world politics...
...What did anybody really care about the ethical or pacific implications of the matter, so long as the "folks back home" would not any longer be prejudiced, one way or another, by the fact that their Senator or Representative had expressed an opinion concerning the Court...
...Then the nation's confidence in the power of its chief executive will have been restored...
...The majority of Democratic leaders have evinced a singular inability to talk in statesmanlike terms of the major issues now being scanned by the public mind...
...Throw down the tariff barriers again and you will find agriculture faring as well as it did from 1913 to 1919...
...Thus government erects economic barriers against which agricultural enterprise struggles in vain...
...The reasons advanced by President Coolidge for opposing the measure earlier in its history are therefore generally sound...
...To suppose that the burden this imposes will be welcomed by a population already worn out by a half-dozen bureaucracies seems to be based on extreme political optimism...
...But in the background of that historic document there was the very real service which Briand has rendered, during several busy and troublesome years, to make Geneva a place of concord and conciliation...
...They went straight to the government and they got the kind of laws and assistance they desired...
...It all depends upon how you throw down those barriers, and upon whether or not agriculture was in a sound condition during those years...
...But a country which tosses that issue into the discard is in a bad way economically and socially, besides being a dangerous place for a stubborn political party...
...The rejoicing which greeted the news that League powers had failed to view favorably the reservations upon which the United States had conditioned its entry into the World Court, was again wholly due to "electoral prospects...
...How else could they establish the fact that, despite their evil reputations, they were really quite harmless and ready to lie down with the lamb...
...It may be that the influence of the farmer would never be great enough to swing a general election, if the sole issue were agricultural relief...
...and if he is content to let the matter rest with Mr...
...The Cincinnati have been looking to Washington for help...
...This steady decline of farming as a profitable enterprise is due, above all, to the simple fact that the government protects the manufacturer and the industrialist, but does not protect the tiller of the soil...
...Mellon's summary of objections to McNaryHaughenism, he is preparing for the exit of Republicanism about as effectively as anybody could...
...Not that such an exit would immediately remedy matters...
...Coolidge, however, it is congressional failure to provide any satisfactory substitute which has continued to emphasize the McNaryHaughen proposals...
...We were ready to enter—but only what we could make to order...
...But the whole complaint of the farmer is that it fails to mean any improvement in so far as he is concerned...
...He was right, that is, with a difference...
...And yet, here and there in the long chronicle of wrangling, a bit of wisdom bows to the public...
...If we may return to farmers momentarily, the fact that the relief they so sorely need has not been forthcoming—or is not even being proposed in a practicable manner—is due to the fact that agricultural opinion itself has been unable to formulate its problems and remedies...
...But the elaborate system of accounting proposed would require exactly what Secretary Mellon says it would—an organization, an operative efficiency, greater even than what is demanded for the proper collection of the income tax...
...We believe that Representative Griffin of New York, was right when he declared: "The farmer sells in a world market, and he buys in a market protected by the tariff...
...One suspects a desire to force the President into a corner by means of the revived McNary-Haughen bill...
...The government cannot obviate the evils of speculative land booming, and it must rely upon education to remove that ignorance of scientific agricultural methods which always spells disaster to a farming region...
...It is only to be hoped that if exercise of the veto power kills the bill, the attention which long weeks of discussion have drawn to rural miseries will not prove fruitless altogether...
...To a large extent the members of Congress are dependent upon the will of the people for their salaries and for as much of "glory" as they are likely to get...
...Perhaps this may help to account for the mediocre quality of most such speeches...
...Since markets are no longer purely local and domestic, it is proper to see even a commercial significance in that policy of international isolation which has been so carefully sponsored during eight years...
...There is no disagreeing with the editors of the New York World to the effect that the tariff has increased the duty on crude aluminum by 150 percent, and the duty on sugar 76 percent...
...Meanwhile we, the champions of peace, untroubled by anything more dire than our prosperity and some minor difficulties, have taken our largest step in world reorganization by forcing to a settlement the bothersome debt question—which again is truly a domestic partisan issue, and which if it were anything else would probably not have come to the fore at all...
...It is therefore inevitable that everything they do or say should be controlled by the aspect of the horizon back home—that the average senatorial speech should be prepared by the electorate...
...It really settles nothing, as regards either production or marketing...
...Coolidge...
...We have never believed that the McNary-Haughen measure is a sound application of the government's power to the concerns of agriculture...
...Tenure of office is the normal concern of every political aspirant...
...Coolidge must know...
...It may be argued—and, of course, always is argued —that the protection of industry means a higher standard of living for employees and citizens generally...
...Apart from adroit manoeuvering for strictly partisan advantages, we have seen little activity in contemporary Washington...
...the relation a year ago was 13 percent...
...The sugar industry, moreover, has been carefully "regulated" now, so as to prevent further decrease in the price...
...These facts Mr...
...and because the American farmer is a citizen, not a peasant, he abandons the task of fighting the barriers and goes after the government which erected them...
...A realistic view of these facts and circumstances leads one to ask, not whether the Republican administration is at fault, but whether the exercise of what may be termed "public opinion" is not actually hampering the processes of government...
...While evidence of all kinds con450 tinued to prove that the distress of agriculture was not a temporary phenomenon, no agency of federal relief was established...
...In the wake of such individualism, it was, of course, quite natural to expect that foreign powers would break all records for alacrity in coming to the conference on naval armaments proposed by Mr...
...From the very beginning the whole matter had been handled with the most startling disregard for anything but domestic issues...
...Washington, which was terrified by the very mention of the League, was just the right place for the biggest members of the League to visit...
...But it does very distinctly account for the veering, the instability, the abnormal hesitancy which now characterizes government action...
Vol. 5 • March 1927 • No. 17
