It is customary these days for a politician addressing a farm group to fill his remarks with gloomy descriptions of the farm problem and lavish political promises of programs designed to meet that problem. Tonight I have no lavish promises to offer - and, looking about me, I am convinced that the economic condition of Massachusetts farmers is not as black as farm conditions are usually currently pictured.
I am aware that you have your problems - some of which concern the Federal Government - and the only promise I offer tonight is my assurance that I will be of all possible help to you in meeting those problems, whatever they may concern - Federal milk-marketing orders, funds for agricultural research or soil conservation, problems created by the new rash of hurricanes and floods, and the early completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway (and I am particularly gratified by your support of that project.) But I am delighted by the fact that, whatever you problems, you have not expected the Federal Government to solve them for you through subsidies and controls.
Despite this, it is with some hesitation that I would like to speak to you tonight about this question of a Federal farm program. Senators from farm states may decide whether Boston should have an urban redevelopment program; and Senators from the deep South can recommend what kind of flood control projects are best suited for our state. But a "city Senator", from an Eastern state generally characterized as urban and industrial in nature, is not supposed to be so presumptuous as to offer suggestions for a farm program. I would speak on this subject, however - not only because Massachusetts can boast of some of the Nation's finest farm lands, most modern methods and most famous products (including cranberries, carnations and poultry products) - not only because farming is a vital Massachusetts industry, pumping more than $200 million of cash farm income into our state's economy every year - but also because the agricultural policies of our Nation, while they may appear to affect more directly more farmers in other parts of the country, are of real significance to Massachusetts and her farmers, industries, consumers and taxpayers.
There are, of course, basic principles upon which practically all Americans, regardless of occupation and regardless of location, can agree. I think most of us would agree that agriculture needs some protection from the distress that results from violent downswings in farm prices. I think most of us want to prevent an agricultural depression that could wreck the Nation's economic health; and we want to prevent inequitable treatment of farmers at the hands of a government discriminating in favor of other segments of the economy. I think most of us would agree that the national interest requires a long range program adjusting production to demand, and enabling our farmers to move high quality food and fibers at reasonable prices to consumers at home and abroad, without wasting our soil resources.
But agreement ends on what kind of program will best fulfill these objectives. Permit me to state at the outset that I am opposed to any farm program calling for high price supports fixed at 90% of parity until such time as the flexible support program has had a sufficient opportunity to prove itself. Given a choice between the present sliding-scale system of price supports and the old program of fixed supports I shall choose - and have chosen in the past - the former, the more flexible program; not because I think it to be the ideal, final answer - and certainly not because I enjoy parting from the majority of my Democratic colleagues on the issue - but because I regard flexible supports as the less harmful of the two alternatives presented and a step in the right direction.
I do not say that nothing good has been accomplished by the fixed price support program. Certainly it provided a helpful cushion during the serious decline in farm prices and farm exports which has taken place in recent years, and during the general economic decline of 1954. But to those of my colleagues who call upon me to support the 90% program, despite its shortcomings, as a means of stabilizing farm income, I can only point to the decline in farm prices and income which has taken place during the operation of that 90% program, a decline which has been intensified by the ever present threat posed by the huge surpluses acquired by the Government under that program. The facts of the matter are that, due in part to the stimulation of high support prices, the productive capacity of our food and fiber industry is over-expanded - but its markets are shrinking - not so much in terms of actual and potential need, which will continue to increase here and in the poorer areas of the world, but in terms of distribution and purchasing power. Price supports at 90% of parity will not solve that problem; price supports at a lower or flexible level will not solve it either - but at least they will not accentuate it so badly.
What is needed, in my opinion, is a new, fresh, realistic appraisal of the farm situation. I am afraid that neither party platform in 1956 will provide either a program based on such an appraisal, or even the hope of one in the future. I doubt that I, as a "city Senator", will have much influence on those platforms and what goes into them. But I would like to suggest tonight four standards of what should not go into next year's farm platforms, either Democratic or Republican. And I offer these four criteria to you tonight with the full knowledge that not one of the four will receive any attention from either party when it draws up its platform next summer.
1. First: No farm platform should be based more upon the myths and magic that are believed necessary to attract farm votes than upon the facts and logic that are necessary to build a sound farm program. We have heard in recent months speeches on one side aimed at stirring up discontent - a so-called "farm revolt" - and we have heard on the other side speeches offering glib but empty reassurances that all is well or soon will be. Neither approach contributes very much to the long-range solution of real farm problems. I do not believe that the farmers of this country will necessarily vote for those who most exaggerate their distress, or who paint the darkest picture of the total depression or total regimentation that will result if their opponents win. Let us drop from the platforms and speeches of both parties all reference to such unmeaningful abstractions as a "free agricultural market"; let us refrain from the repeated use of such loaded terms as "full parity" and "rigidity", used by both sides so much as to become nearly meaningless and let us admit that neither farm prosperity nor the effectiveness of any farm program can be realistically measured in terms of the war and post-war years, when shortages and inflation characterized our agricultural economy.
2. Secondly: No farm platform should be calculated to aid one section of our country or one segment of our economy at the expense of another. I refer not only to the danger of pitting farmers against processors and consumers, but also to the danger of helping one part of the farm population while hurting another. Supporting grain prices in the Middle-west only intensifies the high feed price squeeze of the New England dairy farmer. Prohibiting the importation of Canadian rye may help farmers in Minnesota but it hurts farmers in Massachusetts. Those of you who sell dairy products or vegetables are, under present programs, paying taxes that are used to divert other farmers into competition with you; just as our New England textile manufacturers pay taxes used to acquire huge cotton surpluses which may be "dumped" abroad at cut-rate prices - an action that will not only impair our foreign relations by depriving our allies of their markets, but will also force these same taxpaying manufacturers to compete with that same cheap cotton when it is shipped back to this country in the form of cheap textile imports.
Part of the problem is the common oversimplification - particularly common in political platforms and speeches - that all farmers in all parts of the country are alike. Certainly the problems of the New England poultry farmer, who is usually happy that the Government got out of his business, are vastly unlike the problems of the Oregon wheat rancher who wants the Government in deeper in his business. And even the interests of the Massachusetts dairy and tobacco farmers bear little resemblance to the interests of the dairy farmers of Wisconsin and the tobacco farmers of North Carolina. Yet some of my colleagues in the political profession from other parts of the country are still acclaimed as "farm spokesmen", purporting to speak for both you and me in the deliberations of Congress and the party conventions.
3. Third: No farm platform should depend primarily upon the enlargement of subsidies and the accumulation of surpluses to provide long-range solutions to farm problems. Some politicians still cherish the mistaken belief that the farm vote can be "purchased" by whichever party promises the most expensive subsidy program - despite the fact that any and all farm programs are in danger of being permanently discredited in the eyes of the public as the result of today's excessive surpluses and subsidies. More than $5 billion worth of wheat, cotton and other surplus products are already in Government storage, at a cost to the taxpayers of some $700,000 a day - not including the deterioration and decomposition of those commodities. Our net loss in the last fiscal year on price support operations alone was nearly $800 million. Well over 10% of this nation's cropland - some 40 million acres - is devoted to growing crops not for sale, not for stomachs but for surplus storage. And no end is in sight; for what was originally conceived as the prudent use of Governmental machinery to help farmers adjust production to market demand is now regarded by some as a permanent relief program, guaranteeing certain farmers a fixed profit at Government expense - a guarantee given to no other industry - regardless of the market demand, the cost to the Government, the size of the surpluses on hand or the efficiency of the farmers involved. Like most subsidies, our farm programs have tended to help the inefficient as well as the efficient, and help the rich more than the poor. It has been estimated that less than 2% of the nation's farmers receive more than 25% of the price support program's benefits. In fact, most of the small and marginal farm operators who heavily weight the depressing statistics used by those calling for a more expensive program - the farm families at the bottom of the economic ladder, the Negro and Mexican tenant farmers of the South and Southwest, and others - will on the whole receive few, if any, of the benefits to be passed out under such programs.
4. Fourth: No farm platform should pretend that a program of either fixed or sliding price supports offers a perfect, comprehensive answer to all the ills of agriculture. Neither program is free of the faults for which its own adherents condemn the other. The flexibility of the new compromise program is certainly very slight indeed; and the President's last Budget Message recognized that it would not save the taxpayers any money. Both the old and the new programs depend upon the storage of surpluses too big to handle, too expensive to store. Both old and new offer support to some farmers in some parts of the country that hurts other farmers in other parts of the country. Both concentrate more on the farmer's price than on his net income, more on his guaranteed security than on his independence. Both programs require the farmer to accept various controls, particularly acreage restrictions which - being invariably followed by more intensive fertilization and production on the remaining acres - have in the past had little effect (except as a nuisance) in most instances. Neither program diminishes appreciably the production of surplus commodities or increases appreciably their markets, thus facilitating neither the end of the storage burden not the adoption of sound soil conservation practices. Both subsidize the inefficient farmers while giving little help to those who most need it. Neither program enables our farmers to sell in the world market at normal competitive prices; and both require restrictions on agricultural imports - which would otherwise take advantage of our support program - thus restricting still further the market for farm exports. Neither of the present alternatives offers lower prices to consumers and industry. And finally, both high and sliding-scale supports are based primarily on outmoded parity price relationships of the past, which do not realistically reflect changes in current cost conditions, new techniques or productivity, or future market demands.
Conclusion. I offer these four standards in the hope, already rapidly dimming, that the farm issue in the next campaign will be dealt with honestly, intelligently and fairly, with the national interest uppermost in the minds of the candidates. I do not pretend to know the final answers to all the problems I have raised; I am neither a farmer nor a professor - (neither an egg producer nor an "egg-head"). But I suggest these four criteria to you and to our political leaders because of my conviction that only a new and frank approach to this issue will ever provide a solution to these intricate problems in the years that lie ahead.
In the words of Daniel Webster:
"In highly excited times it is far easier to fan and feed the flames of discord than to subdue them; and he who counsels moderation is in danger of being regarded as failing in his duty to his party … (but) let our object (at all times) be our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country."
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