Word: brannaned
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...told farmers he would keep up their sky-high farm prices and he pledged consumers a painless cost of living. The man Harry Truman picked to do the trick was no magician, and not even a farmer. He was a bald, inconspicuous Colorado lawyer, Secretary of Agriculture Charles F. Brannan. Last week Brannan went before the House and Senate Agriculture Committees and solemnly pulled a rabbit out of his hat. Even as rabbits go, it was a queer-looking animal...
Secretary of Agriculture Charles Brannan, who signed provisionally for the U.S. (see cut), thought there was a much better chance of congressional approval now than last year, when a similar agreement died in the Senate. Then U.S. farmers, with wheat bringing $2.60 a bu., laughed down the proposed world price of $2 a bu. Now the price of wheat was down to around $2.25 a bu. and-with a huge carryover and another bumper crop in prospect-a price of $1.98 might soon look good...
...Glut. Brannan could have found cogent reasons just by glancing at his department's statistics. There was more grain than the U.S. could eat, store or ship abroad. The Government had already taken a fourth of the bumper wheat crop off the market, by loans and purchases under its support plan. It expected to have to do the same with as much as 600 million bushels of corn-more than is normally sold commercially in a year. But with most storage space filled, a huge amount of "free grain" not encompassed by the support program had been thrown...
...Brannan and his commodity experts apparently hoped that the supply of free grain would soon be exhausted, and that grain prices would then hold steady. But that was only a hope. The supply of free wheat alone on Jan. 1 was 514 million bushels-more than the U.S. normally eats in a year. Barring drought, the U.S. would probably have another bumper wheat crop, which could run the carryover to 600 million bushels in 1950. And Argentina and Australia already had so much wheat that they were cutting export prices...
With angry U.S. farmers breathing hotly on its neck, the Administration was desperately trying to find a way of dealing with the glut. Congressmen considered several bills providing for the Government to take over-or build-more storage space. Secretary Brannan mulled the possibility of listing wheat officially as surplus. That would force EGA, which recently approved the purchase of 140 million bushels of Canadian wheat for Britain at lower than U.S. prices, to buy all its grains at home. EGA could ship more grain to Europe, since it could now buy more with the funds allotted. The Department...