THE RIGHT-WING IN OVERALLS
Resnick, Joseph Y.
AMERICAN FARM BUREAU the Right-Wing in Overalls by REPRESENTATIVE JOSEPH Y. RESNICK The notion that farm organizations are a combination hoedown, granary, and quilting bee is decidedly urban. And...
...In a Seattle speech a few years ago, Skousen referred to the twenty-six new African nations as "170 million backward, uneducated, uncivilized primitive people—well, let's call it by name—basically second generation cannibals...
...Despite its vehement protestations to the contrary, the Farm Bureau is neither a federation nor a democracy...
...Unsuspecting Farm Bureau members and parents are told in Farm Bureau publications that these speakers are people who will give the student "a better understanding of the American way of life...
...In his investigation some forty years ago, Senator George Norris discovered that a Farm Bureau endorsement had a price tag on it...
...He has referred to an article by former Presidential adviser, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., as "the plan, the scheme, and the schedule of establishing socialism in our country...
...Particularly nettling is the judiciary, which affirms "the Executive interpretations of statutes beyond the intent of Congress...
...many believe that they must join the Farm Bureau to share the fruits of Extension Service research...
...Just to develop the proper atmosphere, its theme adopted the name of the right wing's favorite dial-a-hate-message, "Let Freedom Ring...
...recognized authorities on the American system" who deplore "spoon-fed socialism...
...However, in the case of Farm Bureau Life Insurance Company of Iowa, all capital stock is owned by the Iowa Farm Bureau, so $350,000 in dividends escapes all taxation...
...And although the Bureau proclaims a separate life from its business interests, it does so with little subtlety...
...Name a piece of progressive legislation and it is a safe bet the Bureau opposes it down the line...
...Of course, the Farm Bureau commitment to allowing farm prices to seek their own level has nothing to do with the fact that Shuman serves as president of the National Food Conference, a hefty industrial combine whose membership reads like a who's who in food processing...
...witch doctors...
...In many states, the Farm Bureau and the Department of Agriculture's Extension Service share the same offices...
...The Farm Bureau has used both its tax-exempt status and the Federal Government to expand its business empire and to finance its right-wing campaigns...
...He referred to their delegates at the United Nations as "U.N...
...The Farm Bureau charges non-members twice as much as members for these tests...
...The concept spread across the Midwest, where, with the aid of the U.S...
...While the farmer may want better credit opportunities and 100 per cent parity, the Bureau talks morality and self reliance at the same time that it is doing everything it can to weaken the small farmer...
...Since when have General Mills, Campbell's Soup, and H. J. Heinz been interested in paying top prices for the commodities they use...
...Bryce Ohmstede, a witness before our Committee, reported this experience when she became Women's Chairman of the Webster County, Nebraska, Farm Bureau: "I began getting letters from a group called Citizens Womens Council, addressed exactly as my Farm Bureau mail came...
...Virtually all other speakers at Farm Bureau youth "citizenship seminars" have the same impeccable right-wing credentials—for example, Melvin Munn, the former Texas grocery clerk who is now heard daily over more than 435 radio stations on H. L. Hunt's "Life Line...
...Typically, it shares the same office, telephone, and personnel with its commercial insurance sales...
...Mrs...
...The hostility and opposition to Federal programs mask the incestuous relationship the Bureau has with the Government...
...Thus, the Farm Bureau manages to implant the idea that Government programs to help the poor and underprivileged are contrary to the will of God, since these efforts have been brought about by unnamed "Communists" in our Government, and Communists do not recognize God...
...It was later 'adopted' by a tax-exempt organization, Citizens Honest Elections Foundations, headed by Don Grimes, president of the Independent Grocers Association...
...Under the heading "The Executive Branch" the reader learns that the Bureau deplores "the use of Government-financed agencies, organizations, or committees to develop policy or promote legislation...
...Any investigation of the Bureau, however, is complex, with many obstacles in the way...
...The evangelism of these sessions is not a wasted effort...
...In many states, it sponsors annual well-planned, well-financed youth conferences...
...The programs outlined in this material followed that which the Farm Bureau women were supposed to be using and, I might add, even the title of some of the programs...
...The attending students, furthermore, are expected to return home to their communities as "leaders" to conduct similar programs on their own...
...The annual report of its secretary-treasurer, Roger Fleming, devoted sixteen of its twenty-nine pages to a defense against my earlier charges...
...He is a master of half-truths...
...This practice is contrary to the sound principles of self government...
...I have asked Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman to look into the improper relationship of the Farm Bureau and agencies of the Department of Agriculture...
...It had been prerecorded at Farm Bureau central...
...Congressman Wright Patman found the Bureau to be in league with grocery chains...
...The crusade has little to do with farming...
...Skousen has written The Naked Communist and other anti-Communist books, and is affiliated with the American Opinion Speakers Bureau, a John Birch Society adjunct, and lectures for Fred Schwarz' Christian Anti-Communism Crusade, Project Alert, and other well-known forums of the far right...
...Chamber of Commerce, it became a formidable barrier to the true agrarian reform fermenting in the Dakotas and part of Minnesota...
...The Bureau is autocratic, dictatorial, even ruthless in imposing its ideas and policies on local affiliates...
...Mayor Lee, himself an endorser of the John Birch Society and a member of its publication's advisory committee— which hardly makes him a flaming liberal—had this to say about Skousen: "That man is an incipient Hitler...
...A man seen even more often than Dr...
...And the belief that all farm lobbies work for the benefit of the farmer, large and small, is a myth...
...Benson, with close ties to Dean Clarence Manion of the For America Committee, spawned the National Education Program and its primer of vitriol about the U.S...
...They last from two to five days...
...It is small wonder that the Bureau is considerably removed from the dirt farmer in East Texas, or the dairyman in Wisconsin, or the wheat grower in Kansas...
...Considering the antecedents of the Bureau, the role it plays is understandable...
...Congressional indifference to Farm Bureau abuse continues today...
...Department of Agriculture cooperated because it felt the need for an organization through which information could be channeled to the farmer...
...The U.S...
...Most became members to take advantage of the advertised "low" insurance rates offered to Bureau members (although in Alabama, when membership fees are added to the cost of automobile insurance, the rate exceeds that offered by other companies...
...Then there are the teams of regulars who make the rounds, carrying with them a verbal right-wing chamber of horrors grown out of the social welfare state...
...Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Ronald Reagan, and Flilton Lewis III have sparked conventions...
...Through a maze of interlocking directorships the Bureau casts its shadows over every facet of farm life in large areas of the country...
...To my dismay, I found that one of these organizations is actually subverting the American farmer...
...The fact that the Bureau operates twenty-one profit-making companies in the latter field might explain its official stance...
...What might once have been a conservative, business-oriented organization, however, is now considerably more...
...This is just a partial listing...
...I discovered its wheeling and dealing in questionable stocks, and its operation of some of the most sordid migrant labor camps in New Jersey and Virginia...
...For all the clatter about morality and the alien forces accused of doingin the farmer, the Farm Bureau itself has not been averse to immorality and doing him in—for profit...
...Farm Bureau newspapers offer the little pamphlet to members at discount prices...
...The Liberty Bookshelf hawks its wares through state and county Farm Bureau newspapers and magazines...
...Benson at Farm Bureau seminars is W. Cleon Skousen...
...Skousen claims to give about 300 speeches a year, many to Farm Bureau groups...
...Referring to the Farm Bureau, Senator Norris once said, "The time will come when the rank and file of American farmers will realize by whom they are being deceived...
...They go under several names, but most are called "citizenship seminars," or "freedom forums...
...A former FBI agent for sixteen years, Skousen was fired as chief of police of Salt Lake City by Mayor J. Bracken Lee, former governor of Utah...
...That time still has not arrived...
...The rest was a reaffirmation of the faith in the good fight against centralization...
...The propaganda told us how to work through our organization to 'measure our candidate' by conservative standards, of course...
...On August 13, 1967, the editor obliged him by printing his message on "freedom...
...Not only does it run private businesses but it is the fifth highest spender among the registered lobbyists in Washington...
...Almost any Bureau clambake— county, state, or national—is a safe place for a pitch from the traveling salesmen of the ultra-right...
...Conferences are widely publicized in state and county Farm Bureau publications, in local newspapers and radio stations—via local Farm Bureau publicity chairmen in each county—and local speakers' bureaus...
...Since insurance companies pay taxes on only a fraction of their income, roughly ninety-six per cent of these profits are untaxed, free to be invested in activities unrelated to farming...
...Neither it nor the fifty-four page "Farm Bureau Policies for 1968" had much to do with farming, but the latter certainly provided insights into the kind of Shangri-La this country would be if the Farm Bureau were in control...
...He ran the police department in Salt Lake City in exactly the same manner as the Communists in Russia operate their government...
...Robert Young, a youthful convert to Farm Bureau free thinking, wrote the following in the East Texas Light about his experience last summer: "We learned of the grave dangers of Communism and now we feel we must create a great Americanistic feeling in our community and state level...
...JOSEPH Y. RESNICK, New York Democrat, has served in the House of Representatives since 1964...
...George Benson, president of Oklahoma Christian College and until recently president of the notorious Harding College, Searcy, Arkansas, called by the Kansas City Tribune "the West Point of the Far Right...
...It contained bizarre propaganda, stickers that looked like eyes, red spots and said, 'I see red,' which were supposed to be attached to the letters we wrote to Congressmen who didn't fit the ultra-conservative pattern...
...In Illinois, the great majority of farmers believe that the two organizations are one and the same...
...This publicity machine operates both before and after the conference to publicize the message of the speakers...
...For example, more Farm Bureau families reside in urban Cook County, Illinois, than in any other county in the country...
...As chairman of the Rural Development Subcommittee of the House Agriculture Committee, I held hearings last summer in which the major farm organizations testified about the effect of Federal programs on rural America...
...By my calculation, the Farm Bureau is the most effective conduit now in existence for the dissemination of right-wing propaganda...
...In addition, the Farm Bureau is a network of feed, seed, and supply centers, tire marts, fertilizer plants, and marketing cooperatives (so-called) which frequently depress profits for the farmer by keeping prices down and by paying him with stock of doubtful value...
...Another frequent Farm Bureau lecturer is Dr...
...Even David had a slingshot and some rocks to use on the original Goliath...
...Each county Farm Bureau unit is told to select two or three top students, whom it sponsors...
...Among other ventures, the Farm Bureau joined hands with American Cyanamid in the futile fight against Federal fertilizer production at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and with the private utility companies in opposition to the creation of the Rural Electrification Administration...
...The cost of sponsoring each student is generally underwritten by the county Farm Bureau alone—with tax-exempt funds—or in cooperation with local businessmen or civic groups, such as the Chamber of Commerce...
...He has been quoted frequently in the John Birch Bulletin...
...Even Farm Bureau insurance salesmen get into the act...
...It is opposed to collective bargaining for farmers...
...Since his arrival in the United States from Hungary in 1940, this self-proclaimed expert has lectured and written on the threat of Communism, external and internal...
...And to push its message it traded heavily on its 1.7 million farm family membership—though anywhere from forty per cent to sixty per cent have no connection with agriculture...
...While posing as the voice and moral backbone of the farmer, the tax-exempt American Farm Bureau Federation and its affiliates are in reality a gigantic complex of insurance companies, with more than $1.2 billion in assets and more than $6 billion of insurance in force...
...The Farm Bureau keeps him busy addressing conventions and meetings...
...The forty-ninth annual convention of the Farm Bureau, held in Chicago last December, is a case in point...
...We plan, in our fight against Communism, to take turns writing an editorial each week to your paper with your permission...
...This group was headed by John Stuart, former chairman of the board of Quaker Oats...
...In 1961, the national organization cited General Edwin Walker, the vaunted hero of Oxford, Mississippi, "for encouraging and conducting a program in American education...
...The Internal Revenue Service is investigating its tax-exemption...
...Somewhat sheepishly Farm Bureau President Charles B. Shuman admits "there's a little self interest in trying to get the Government out of crop insurance...
...In other states, Farm Bureau members administer the Department of Agriculture's Stabilization and Conservation Service, although the national organization is opposed to price supports and production controls—the business of the ASCS...
...It lobbies for retention of the 27.5 per cent oil depletion allowance, although I wonder how many farmers benefit from this tax break granted oil millionaires...
...Government...
...These lucrative operations are theoretically independent of the tax ex-* empt American Farm Bureau Federation and its affiliates...
...Furthermore, every one of the Bureau's top twenty-seven executives is a director of at least one of its other enterprises...
...When Boone County, Nebraska, members voted sixty-eight to one to extend Social Security coverage to farmers, their views were somehow translated into opposition by their delegates to the state Bureau convention...
...At my request, the Securities and Exchange Commission is considering an investigation of possible fraud in the Bureau's stock dealings...
...Both his motives and his means are open to question...
...The Farm Bureau reaffirms its belief in separation of Church and State as a means of condemning the liberal actions of both the National Council of Churches and the National Catholic Rural Life Conference for their courageous activities designed to improve the lot of downtrodden farm laborers...
...In Kentucky, the Federal ASCS requires that before a farmer participates in its soil conservation program he must have his soil analyzed for fertility by Farm Bureau laboratories—although there are independent fertilizer companies which could perform the tests as competently, and, in most cases, less expensively...
...Former Farm Bureau President Allen B. Kline, now a director of Americans for Constitutional Action, has tried his hand at philosophy with his "Reflections on Freedom"—where, among other things, he claims that the Constitution is being subverted by the Supreme Court...
...It has so infiltrated many programs that it runs them and manages, with its business acumen, to turn a profit—for itself...
...My investigation of the Bureau is solely on my own, since my colleagues on the Agriculture Committee have little interest in a full scale inquiry against this Goliath in overalls...
...For many years, it resisted anything more than fifty per cent parity—and prefers to talk about a "free market...
...Nicholas Nyaradi...
...It continues to wage war against those who would extend workmen's compensation, Social Security, and Medicare benefits to the farmers...
...A favorite on the hustings is Dr...
...In 1909 the Binghamton, New York, Chamber of Commerce and the Lackawanna Railroad decided to start a farm organization designed to preserve the advantages to business in its relations with farmers...
...Last year, it reported spending $136,000...
...Discovery of these activities causes momentary embarrassment, but does little to deter the Bureau from its true course...
...How this jibes with the Bureau's call for a school prayer amendment to the Constitution must be left to the practitioner of alchemy...
...in some states the Extension Service, which is supposed to educate all farmers regardless of their affiliation, has become little more than a vehicle for the sale of Farm Bureau insurance...
...It has fought low-interest commodity credit loans and has assaulted low-rate Government crop insurance programs...
...In Illinois the Bureau affiliate, the Illinois Agricultural Association, owns a fleet of barges...
...Supreme Court, the Federal Executive branch—supposedly to improve life on the farm...
...The Bureau is a perfect sewer line for transporting right-wing ideology, particularly to our young people...
...On the advisory committee was Allen B. Kline, former president of the Farm Bureau, and presently a trustee of the ultra-conservative Americans for Constitutional Action...
...outstanding lecturers "on the present trends jeopardizing the very foundation of our American heritage...
...the latter recovered a substantial sum in an out-of-court settlement of a libel suit...
...They have gone after unions, the U.S...
...the Alabama Farm Bureau owns hotels and shopping centers, and has extensive real estate holdings...
...I think his odds were better than mine...
...In the name of God, freedom, and anti-Communism the Bureau and its affiliates have attacked Republican Senator Milton Young of North Dakota and George McGovern before he became a Senator from South Dakota...
...Therefore, God-fearing Americans are those who support good, old-fashioned free enterprise which—in plain Farm Bureau language—puts God squarely against price supports and production controls...
Vol. 32 • March 1968 • No. 3
