Word: bensons
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Ezra Benson needed to be calm and prayerful, for he is presiding over the agricultural economy of the U.S. at a time of revolution, not revolt. Caught up in the forces of change, most U.S. farmers are worried, many are angry, a few are giving up. The revolution that besets them started slowly more than a generation ago, when U.S. farming began to change from a family way of life to a specialized indu try. Through the years new machines- tractors, trucks, combines, multiple plows, multi-row cultivators, a whole catalogue of farm equipment-made it possible...
...Card for Drew. Thus fortified, Benson endures violent criticism with the demeanor of a Boy Scout leader (which he is) in a den of noisy cubs. He also turns the other cheek: last Christmas, he took pains to send a card to one of his most vitriolic critics, Columnist Drew Pearson, whom he studiously skips in reading the newspaper...
...line with the Mormon concept that the family should share the father's business, the Bensons have made the U.S. farm problem their problem. As the result of long discussions at home, the Secretary's wife once got him to publicize milk-dispensing machines to help relieve the dairy-product surplus. Flora Benson attends many of his press conferences, and occasionally finds time from her duties at home (she has no maid, does her own housework) to make a speech. In Toledo last week for a speech at a Republican women's meeting, she said...
Lesson in Zigzag. Like many another member of the Eisenhower Cabinet, Benson went into his job with his firm convictions, and then discovered that Washington had something to teach him about the kind of give-and-take that makes government function. In his first major policy statement in 1953, he said that "price supports should provide insurance against disaster" and that "inefficiency should not be subsidized in agriculture." Today, without being so doctrinaire, he says: "I have been confident all the way along that what we are doing is best for farmers. I have no interest other than that...
...after Benson abruptly cut dairy support prices by 15 parity points, the President called his Secretary of Agriculture to the White House and asked whether the action might not have been too abrupt. Then Old Soldier Eisenhower drew some lines on a piece of scratchpaper to show Old Farmer Benson that, in military action, there are two ways to reach an objective-the direct way, and by a zigzag approach. Advised Ike: try to understand the merits of the zigzag...