Word: bensons
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AGRICULTURE Secretary Benson hopes to shift more of his big lending operations on commodities to private lenders. Under his plan, the Commodity Credit Corp., which now has $3,476,300,000 tied up in crop loans and inventories, would sell part of its loans to banks, guaranteeing them 3% interest if they handle the paper work, 2½% if they do not. Thus, private banks, not the Treasury, would put up much of the money for new support loans...
AGRICULTURE Secretary Benson, who wanted to support crops only at low "disaster levels,"has given up any hope of any big change in present farm programs...
...Republican Party itself, blamed for going back on promises to the farmers. Farmers and ranchers everywhere told me that Ike had made specific promises in his campaign speeches to them that he would keep "the program" intact if he were elected. Now they blame Secretary of Agriculture Benson and, of course, Tom Dewey and "Eastern money" for talking Ike into breaking his promises. In eastern Oregon, Washington, northern Idaho and Montana, Ike is similarly popular, while Secretary of Interior McKay and the "power trusts and bankers of the G.O.P." are the villains to public-power supporters...
...Benson's original policy statements were perhaps too blunt and badly timed. Drought and falling prices were affecting farmers and cattlemen from Ohio to Texas, and they were getting worried. At just that moment the Administration spoke its piece. By the time I reached the Midwest and the plains states opinion seemed to be firming up that Ike would have to be notified that the farm program would have to stay as is, and that if he didn't accept the notification, a lot of farmers would go back to voting Democratic...
Meanwhile, Benson personally bears the brunt of the bitterness. In Goodland and Logansport, Ind., Centerville, Mt. Pleasant and Shenandoah, Iowa, Nebraska City, Kearney, Ogallala and the Scottsbluff area of Nebraska, I met many who complained that the Secretary is a businessman, not a farmer. In strong Farm Union areas such as central and eastern Montana the Republican Party and policy are held to blame rather than Benson. Near Billings, I heard a recorded anti-G.O.P. speech by Senator Jim Murray in use as a radio commercial by a retail outlet as a sales pitch to farmers to buy portable...