RELUCTANT REVOLUTIONARY

...Reluctant Revolutionary A Study of Brannan -- The Man and the Plan By BEVERLEY M. BOWIE NO SECTOR of the American economy has undergone more profound structural revision in the last generation than agriculture...

...he was merely extending the principle to cover the perishable commodities...

...With his double-barreled appeal to both labor and farmers, he is, in sober fact, the darling of the Democratic National Committee...

...The Grange has termed the Plan a cancer on the body politic...

...Brannan's enemies in the Bureau and the Grange and on the Hill, indeed, are only just waking up to a fact his friends have long realized: that the balding, quiet, matter-offact Secretary who was supposed to be just a "lame-duck" appointment is in the game for keeps, and that he will not easily be knocked out of it...

...A succession of bumper crops means world surpluses, dwindling prices, abuse of the land, and farm bankruptcies...

...Yet it is Agriculture which will probably do the bulk of the spadework, operating through the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization...

...But Brannan's relations with Labor Secretary Tobin and Interior Secretary Chapman are of the best...

...2. That market prices of perishables (from which farmers get 75% of their cash receipts) be allowed to sink to the point dictated by supply-and-demand...

...the UN's whole Point Four program adds up to barely $35,000,000...

...Once part-owner of a ranch in Colorado's Yuma County, Brannan now lives like any other harassed Washingtonian dude...

...The way to tame market-wrecking surpluses is by Government purchases, acreage allotments, crop quotas...

...Brannan blinked...

...In most perishables, he claimed, over-production has been nothing but a masking-word for under-consump-tion...

...Technicians from the USDA have set up more than 300 research and demonstration projects throughout Latin America...

...Sometimes it has meant the beginning of national depression...

...on the contrary, record crops resulted as farmers tried to make up in volume what they were losing in unit price...

...when they passed the danger points, crop controls would go into effect—yes...

...2. Both the Farm Bureau and the Grange, unofficially but obviously, tried to deliver the farm vote to Dewey—and failed...

...A recent poll, he might point out, showed farmers of conservative hog-rich Iowa friendly to the Administration by a solid majority, while another poll in a central state indicated Farm Bureau members themselves favoring the Brannan Plan...

...One wing of farm opinion—spearheaded by Allan Kline of the Farm Bureau and his economist-mentor...

...Limited in Brannan's original version to perishables, his production payments could be extended to storables as well...

...Though a New Dealer to the core, Brannan is more of a pragmatist than a preacher...

...Congress, stymied and rather confused, eventually passed the puzzle to Secretary Brannan, with a pink rush-slip attached...

...Brannan's own career has been linked with the larger part of Phase One...

...Each has vied with the other in proclaiming its desire to shield the farmer from the horrors of free competition...

...Though the agents of Agriculture's Extension Service, on the county level, are paid in part by the Federal Government, they often function in practice as officials of local Farm Bureaus, conducting membership campaigns, docking dues from farmers' allotment checks, editing Bureau publications...

...Rockbottom farm prices in 1932, they pointed out, did not discourage output...

...For six weeks, Brannan and a staff of economists, lawyers, marketing experts, and administrators wore out their pencils and their tempers over the problem, working nights and weekends...

...The basic philosophy of Phase One has been summed up by Brannan himself in the words: "Without price supports, the farmer has almost no control over the prices of his products...

...No farmer will dare spit on his own pasture without a Government permit...

...His fundamental proposals: 1. That all support-levels be deliberately geared to guarantee a definite national farm purchasing-power (he chose the 1939-48 average as a starter...

...Rigid application of "parity" supports was keeping up the farmer's prices, all right, but at heavy expense to consumer and taxpayer alike...

...He is at the mercy of the market...

...Architect of this next major mutation "is Secretary of Agriculture, Charles Franklin Brannan—one of the least likely of commissars...

...Thus, the free market in agricultural commodities, for a long time the only "pure" area of competition to which classical economists could proudly refer their students, is ticked off as a maniacal force which must be laced up in a straitjacket and made to behave...

...at the right price, consumers would eat all the farmers could produce...

...Should "the Veep" be persuaded to retire into the Kentucky sun with his bride, few Capitol observers would be surprised to see Truman elevate Brannan to be his running-mate...

...A bumper crop is likely to bring in less income than a normal, or perhaps even a short, crop...

...Slashing price-supports would mean either (a) even bigger surpluses...

...What's more, he has made it plain that the Plan, far from being relegated to the dust-bin, will be emblazoned on the Party banners when it goes into action in '50...

...Brannan sees this kind of global service multiplied a hundred-fold if the FAO program gets financial backing from Congress during this session...

...Special advisory missions have trekked off not only to Latin America but to Greece, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, the Philippines, China...

...To get started on these and other projects, the FAO is asking its UN members for $9,425,456...

...But it will depend more than anything else on the success or failure of Phase Two...

...No prima donna, he clears his appointments with the right people, maintains cordial contacts with even some of the Dixiecrat politicos, yet remains ace-high with the liberal committeemen from the West...

...Right-wingers in the Administration like Secretaries Sawyer and Snyder eye Brannan coolly...

...IV It would be naive to expect, however, that Brannan is going to be able to devote any considerable fraction of his energies this year to Point Four work—or that Truman would want him to...

...Much of Kline's animus toward Brannan stems from this personal disenchantment, thinks Truman...

...His Department, he can claim, has been in the business, vis-a-vis Latin America, for a decade...

...or (b) even lower farm incomes—with a deflationary impact for the rest of the economy...

...3. Truman, like F.D.R., wrote off the opposition of the press a long while back...

...3. That the Government pay the producers of these perishables the difference (if any) between support-price and market-price...

...Alben Barkley has squatter's rights on the vice-presidential spot...

...speak for...

...The rankest heresy in 1932, this credo of Phase One has become the neo-orthodoxy of today...

...Truman has become strongly skeptical that the officers of these pressure-groups any longer represent their rank-and-file...

...He has proven an excellent Cabinet member and an effective party wheel-horse...

...The Uovernment would no...

...But controls were already in effect on the country's basic crops...

...And after those, another and even more important election in '52...

...He became Secretary in 1948, when the unruly productivity of the American farmBEVERLEY M. BOWIE, presently a free-lance writer, was wartime Acting Chief of the Central European Section of the Office of Strategic Services...

...The farmer's whole output would flow into the channels of trade...

...Yet he is still miles from the looney-bin, still an effective fighter, still capable of meeting his enemies with a grin...

...but when the bell for the next round clangs, he is always out there ready to swing...

...This is Regimentation...

...The Farm Bureau has given the Secretary a national snub and followed it up with explicit attacks...

...Indeed, he argued, there might well be less need of restrictions under his plan than under the existing legislation...

...But neither side has come up with disinterested figures—or is likely to until the 1950 political campaign is out of the way...

...Prominent in ganging up on the Plan were the country's two largest farmer organizations (the Farm Bureau and the Grange...

...Not so ambitious as to be reckless, not so idealistic as to be mouse-trapped, he presents a pretty poor target...

...And if, in some years and in certain specific crops, true surpluses developed, the resultant acreage restrictions would still be voluntarily imposed by the participating farmers themselves on the democratic basis of a majority vote...

...Sometimes, in debate, he sounds as if one more sock beneath the belt would make him bawl out loud...

...His plan let both production and pricing alone, as long as they stayed at satisfactory levels...

...Republicans miffed at the dissolution of the nonpartisan farm front...

...Hundreds of "in-service" trainees have been brought up for specialized agricultural work...

...The payments would all be calculated and dispensed by committees of the farmers themselves, in their own counties—exactly as the allotment checks had been handled for years under Republican and Democratic support-price programs...

...Brannan asserts his program, over the long run, will cost the nation less than maintaining present high prices...

...He is the author of a novel, "Operation Bughouse," an hilarious satire on intelligence activities in the Balkans during the period of World War II, and of a number of magazine articles and book reviews...

...As for this business of bestowing or withholding production-payments according to the way a farmer voted, just how was it to be arranged...

...The outlines of Phase Two, still fresh from the drafting boards of the bureaucracy, can be discerned more clearly each day...

...Over the past two years he has heard himself called every name in the book, has had to sweat out repeated barrages of phoney quotes and twisted statistics, has had to bear the more-or-less deliberate misinterpretation by former friends of his every word, deed, or motive...

...and the party that writes the checks will own the votes...

...Thus the present price support program adds to prices in the marketplace and to costs of Government...

...But downward revision of price supports, announced well ahead of time, might discourage farmers from raising too much, eliminate troublesome surpluses, and dispense with the need for so much Federal coddling and interference...

...What kind of a lacing will the taxpayers take...

...A word about this anomaly...

...He retains, however, a Westerner's strenuous simplicity, his immunity to fancy ideologies, his preference for facts and figures...

...At the same time, when attacks are made on that authority by those Brannan regards as the farmer's foes, he refuses to give an inch...

...Yet, just as the new theology was achieving the accolade of non-partisan acceptance, its economic underpinnings were beginning to wobble...

...More than 2,000 officials, students, teachers, businessmen, and technicians have been shunted through the Department's mill in the last two and a half years...

...II The 81st Congress began to hold hearings and ask questions...

...The Administration is thinking of slapping back with the Thomas-Granger bill to divorce the Farm Bureau from the lower rungs of the Agriculture Department...

...Theodore Schultze of Chicago University—was for turning back...

...For his scheme called for keeping consumer-prices of perishables at the lowest levels the marketpface dictated—and production at the highest rate practicable...

...Even if only known varieties of higher-yielding seed are sown, production can be pushed up a good 50...

...Then Brannan took their product, revised and reshaped it, and carried it up to Congress...

...The cry went up from the camps of the righteous: This is Socialism...

...Now estimated at between $250 and $300 millions.] Because our purchases take potatoes off the market, consumers pay higher prices than would otherwise be the case...

...Moreover, they claimed, per-capita farm income in 1948 was still little more than half that for non-farm persons—and starting to slip...

...Brannan, heading into this and other squalls in 1950, can count on the President's support for more reasons than his utility as a standard-bearer...

...The producers would be assured a steady income...

...Even more important for the President, perhaps, is the way Brannan has hit it off with Dean Ache-son...

...Phase One in this reticent revolution is now drawing to a close...

...A free market was not the answer...

...Dutifully he read its complex provisions to a joint session of House and Senate committeemen and went home to sleep it off, satisfied that an assignment honorably fulfilled would be honorably interred...

...Washington will sow, and Washington will reap...

...Now it looks as if the Department will follow up its repeated warnings with direct legislative action...

...er was placing intolerable strains upon the primitive regulatory mechanisms of the Wallace-Wickard-Anderson era...

...His assets: he can laugh at himself...

...The housewife would be able to buy at the lowest price possible...

...Each political party has genuflected before it...

...In May 1949 Brannan wrote in some alarm: "The cost of supporting prices on the 1948-crop potatoes will run to more than $200 million...

...Brannan will see it through...

...go into the market and bid up the price of perishables...

...Unravelled, Brannan's scheme was seen to contain a basic solution to the Government's stock-piling plight...

...Brannan, in fact, seems by temperament almost ideally suited to withstand the strains of conflict...

...There is a strong chance, indeed, that the long-smoldering feud between Agriculture and Interior may be doused for good by the Chapman-Brannan entente...

...James Patton, president of the Farmers Union, demanded at once that they be applied right down the line, and there is no evident bar in theory—and less in political fact—to prevent this...

...It is as if the Labor Department's mediation men should spend part of their time organizing CIO units in their territories...

...He awoke to find himself hailed by a few as the farmer's true and great friend, denounced by many as a witless spendthrift, and credited by the canny with having sketched the exceedingly probable guide-lines of Phase Two...

...At all events, the battle is now joined, and no holds are being barred...

...Yet he is not one of Heywood Broun's liberals who define themselves by leaving the room when the fight starts...

...He joined the Department of Agriculture's Resettlement Administration in 1935, when the Phase One attempt to replace the free market by Triple-A controls was in full swing...

...If Brannan in 1950-52 can convince the consumer that the production-payments plan will mean lower prices at the grocery store, and can make it work in practice without stripping the last stave from the taxpayer's barrel, then Brannan, his President, and his party will have converted the agricultural revolution of our times into a political asset beyond price...

...What was all the fuss about...

...4. That the large "factory-farms" be limited in the amount of price-protection they receive...

...He might have added that what was true of potatoes was true also of eggs: by the year's end, the Government was to find itself with 67,000,000 pounds of dried eggs, and a probable loss of $90,000,000...

...On the credit side, he believes consumer and labor support for any scheme to lower food prices will far more than offset any farmer or upper-income votes lost...

...There are elections to be won in the fall...

...Gentle, colorless, soft-spoken, com-mon-sensical, Brannan at 46 is probably as much surprised as anyone else to find himself the protagonist of radical change...

...Nevertheless, Brannan's measure on Capitol Hill was sidetracked in committee, and another bill was quickly prepared and rushed through, freezing virtually all support-prices at 90% of parity for a year, with a sliding-scale joker in the background that would slash supports later if surpluses mounted...

...And the central repository of the American agricultural know-how will be Brannan's Department, its Washington agencies, its land-grant colleges, its wide extension services, its laboratories, files, and experiment stations...

...Truman may be counting, too, on the possible defection of the Bureau's Southern (cotton) wing, for years restive under the policies of the dominant Midwest and Northeastern "feeders" whom Kline & Co...

...Prof...

...Taft) talk of bankruptcy...

...If Truman catf persuade this Congress to chip in the United States' share—and there are few who doubt he can—Brannan will find himself Santa Claus to a third of the human race...

...Predominantly American will be the funds, and—more important—predominantly American will be the know-how...

...They argued that artificially high prices brought forth artificially large crops, making government controls and quotas inevitable...

...The way to fatten farm per-capita income, perennially lagging behind its urban counterpart, is by rigged prices...

...Secretaries at loggerheads over the glory or the procedure could wreck the whole effort...

...The State Department holds titular responsibility for prosecution of Truman's beloved Point Four program...

...Confronted with Brannan's Plan, Congress reacted like a man tossed a grenade with the pin out...

...III Yet President Truman let it be known before and after Brannan's defeat that he was back of his Plan 100...

...The answers are important: 1. Allan Kline, Farm Bureau chieftain, rode on Thomas Dewey's 1948 train, metaphorically at least, and seemed to think he was slated to disembark in November as Secretary of Agriculture...

...But he will be 74 by the time the polls open...

...That, of course, will depend on a lot of factors not wholly under Brannan's control—including the aspirations of half-a-dozen other vice-presidential hopefuls now warming up...

...But Brannan and Acheson proved in their jointly deft disposal of the International Commodity Clearing House wrangle at last November's FAO meeting that they could work well in harness...

...he can get mad and let off steam...

...Southern Democrats, and, outside the legislative halls, nino-tenths of the nation's newspapers...

...Not so, argued Brannan, the left-wing Farmers Union, and sundry kibitzers from labor...

...so has the Farmers Union...

...If, he points out, strains of rice can be developed resistant to the rice-borer and to rice-fungus, millions now hungry will eat...

...The Grange has protested for years...

...What 1949 potatoes will cost the Government nobody knows...

...The Government would not hoard carload after carload of potatoes, dehydrate and store millions of eggs, worry over its accumulations of commodities consumers were begging for...

...Brannan, of course, is no stranger to Point Four policy...

...he can keep his eye on the ball...

...He began law practice in Denver in the watershed year of 1929, when a century and a half's operation of an agricultural free market was about to peter out in an untidy mess of foreclosures, dust-bowls, and rural relief...

...He holds no brief for bureaucracy and would like to see the farmer-committees out in the grassroots get a rebate on some of the authority they've delegated to his Department in Washington...

...His opponents (like Sen...

...For though the dispensing agency may be the FAO and its seat be in Rome, the principal paymaster will still be in Washington and the presiding genius will still, perforce, be Brannan...

...Brannan, they have found, is sweet-tempered—but tough-minded...