October 4,—1935-Potato Farmers Emerge From Red Tape Storm; Can Still Grin
The Washington Daily News—Friday—October 4,—1935
Potato Farmers Emerge From Red Tape Storm; Can Still Grin
By ERNIE PYLE
Potatoes seem to be the big noise in Washington right now—what with Ickes and Hopkins and the President out of town. And since I’m no potato expert myself, I decided to get in on the show. So I went to the potato hearing at the Agriculture Department yesterday.
My qualifications for attending this hearing are as follows: for 12 years I bugged four rows of Indiana potatoes every summer, and could still do the same if I had to; in 1918 I peeled 18,000 bushels of potatoes for sailors to eat, and I personally can and do partake of potatoes in any form whatever, from raw to cooked in pie.
So I went to this hearing with a thousand other farmers, and I sure was proud of those farmers. They may have horns on their hands and potato roots in their hair, but they’re the best-natured people on the face of the earth.
All they wanted was to tell the Government how poor they are, and the Government wouldn’t let them testify the way they wanted to, and instead of getting mad they went out for lunch laughing about it.
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You’ve read, probably, about this potato business. Congress passed a bill saying that after Nov. 1 the AAA should restrict potato production, in the hope of raising prices. Anybody who sold more than his allotment would get fined and maybe go to jail. Well, the Republicans and little growers raised such a howl that the thing has become a national issue, and the AAA is trying to squirm out of enforcing the law, and even people who hate potatoes are reading all about it. This hearing yesterday was to try to thrash out what to do.
Well, all these potato men were there, and they wanted the law enforced. So many showed up they had to move the hearing to the big auditorium in the Agriculture Building and even then there weren’t enough seats.
Here was the set-up—a thousand farmers, a couple of dozen politicians, and six Government specialists. The Government men sat on the stage and tried to direct the hearing. It probably wasn’t their fault the way things went, because I imagine at home they’re pretty nice fellows. But their hearing, to begin with, was all bound up with elaborate rules and regulations concerning what should be talked about and how it should be said.
And then the chairman had to open the meeting with a long, dry reading of official documents, which nobody understood, and then the Government attorney gave all the legal aspects of the case—and you know what legal aspects sound like—and then a couple of other Government men had to talk, and altogether things went on like that for an hour before anybody started speaking English.
And then when the testimony finally started, with each speaker sworn in like a witness at a murder trial, the chairman wouldn’t let them talk the way they wanted to. They had to talk the way it said in the book of rules.
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Finally that all got under the skin of Sen. Josiah Bailey of North Carolina, the original potato man’s friend, and he got up wearily and said it didn’t make sense to him, and he was going to talk whether the chair liked it or not.
So while the chair was trying to say that legal arguments weren’t permitted, Sen. Bailey yells, “You’re gonna hear me, so help me God,” and went right ahead talking and the chairman grinned sheepishly and sat down, which to my mind was a very handsome way out of the situation.
So, Sen. Bailey talked about his rights as a plain citizen, and the farmers clapped, and then Rep. Lindsay Warren, the other Sir Galahad of the North Carolina potato, talked about how the AAA was trying to nullify our laws, and the farmers clapped, and then finally they did get some witnesses on the stand who had come all the way from California and Colorado and who said in about three sentences that the potato business was lousy, and then we all went out to lunch.
By that time the Government men wished they had never come to this thing anyhow, and the potato farmers were still poor, and waitresses were still dealing half-cooked French fries off the arm, and it still cost twice as much to grow a bushel of potatoes as you can sell them for.
But the farmers took it all good-naturedly, and laughed as they went out to lunch, and were still laughing when they got back, and so I went on home and left them there laughing.
The poor devils.
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