Word: bensons
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...Paul, Minn, last week, Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson rose before a farm audience of 3,000 to repeat two points he had been expounding in Washington: 1) price supports should be used only as "insurance against disaster," 2) farmers "should not be placed in the position of working for Government bounty rather than producing for a free market." Back in Washington the next day, Benson let it be known that he does not intend to shove Government supports under sagging cattle prices, because there is no "feasible method" for doing...
Suddenly the fervent price-support Democrats woke up to the fact that Benson was carrying a modified free-economy philosophy right into their own back pastures. Said Minnesota's Representative Eugene J. McCarthy, "[Benson] is like a man standing on the bank of the river telling a drowning man that all he needs to do is take a deep breath of air." Alabama's Senator John Sparkman said that Benson had "in effect repudiated the price-support program." (One notable exception: New Mexico's Clinton Anderson, Harry Truman's ex-Secretary of Agriculture, who agreed "with...
...Agriculture would like to leave, as a monument to his administration, a long-range farm program. But whenever farm groups face a price decline or crop failure, they set up such a political yowl the secretary must turn from his planning and play the role of fireman. Ezra Benson has discovered this early. Fanned by a gradual price decline, a sudden fear is sweeping the prairies, causing new agricultural groups to demand shelter from the free market...
...brains behind Benson's hoped-for long range plan should try to tempt this needed migration on a slow but national scale. Any long-range program that does not reduce the number of farmers is doomed to the same recurring emergencies and artificial price props that have plagued past farm policies and will continue...
...abolition of price ceilings and the compulsory grading of cattle required by OPS regulations. Before the week was out, the cattlemen got their wish: the Administration discarded meat-price ceilings (see above), and grading automatically became a voluntary matter again, as in pre-OPS days. Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson advised cattlemen to rid their minds of "unwarranted pessimism" and to avoid "panic selling." By week's end the stampede to the stockpens had slowed down, and cattle prices had firmed. An Agriculture Department bulletin reported: "The sharp decline in meat-animal prices seems to be about ended...