Word: wheat
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Swinging out through Colorado, Campaigners Legge and Hyde entered western Kansas where, at Hays, Governor Clyde Reed was waiting to dispute their economic message. Governor Reed had last month asked the Farm Board to buy 25 million more bushels of wheat to up the market price (TIME, July 7). Chairman Legge had sharply reminded him that the Farm Board was no "Santa Claus!" In their hotel lobby Chairman Legge met Governor Reed, joshed him: "Don't mind Hyde and me. We're harmless. But watch out for these economists. They're chain lightning when you tangle with them...
Before a large coatless audience in the Hays Coliseum, Governor Reed opened the argument by bitterly flaying the Farm Board's crop reduction program. He declared western Kansas could raise nothing but wheat unless it returned to live stock, asked why crop limitation was not imposed east of the Mississippi River, criticized the Farm Board's "gospel of despair...
Governor Reed took a personal dig at Chairman Legge as onetime head of International Harvester Co. when he declared: "Is it fair, is it sound public policy to ask the wheat farmer to leave his land idle to permit an expansion of the agricultural implement trade in foreign countries so as to enable those countries to better compete with the American wheat farmer?" On the platform beside him Chairman Legge clamped his cigar, made no answer. When his turn to speak came he explained that the Farm Board had already sunk in wheat twice the crop's proportionate share...
Next day at Dodge City Chairman Legge, referring to Kansas as the largest U. S. wheat producing State, declared: "The biggest hog will always lie in the trough. Kansas is now in its trough." By the time he had reached Amarillo, Tex., Kansas was up in arms at his epithet. Max and Louis Levand, publishers of the Wichita Beacon, wired President Hoover that his Farm Board Chairman had "insulted 1.850.000 people," demanded Mr. Legge's resignation. To Chairman Legge they telegraphed...
...week's most astonishing turn against the Farm Board's wheat policy occurred not on the Legge-Hyde barnstorming trip but in Washington where Senator Arthur Capper of Kansas, staunch Administration supporter, joined the hue and cry for the Board to buy more wheat. Earlier in the week, through the Republican National Committee, Senator Capper had issued a political statement praising the Board and its chairman. Mr. Legge's appointment, he said, "has proved one of the most notable to public service in many years." President Hoover, he insisted, had fulfilled his farm aid pledges of the campaign...