"The spirit of Ezra Benson is certainly in this chamber tonight," gloomed Minnesota's Senator Hubert Humphrey one night last week, as the Senate steamed through its third day of debate on the Administration's 1958 farm bill. Humphrey, longtime big farm-subsidy spender, was dead right. Benson's aides were hard at work outside the chamber feeding statistics and arguments to their rapidly growing body of supporters. Later the same night the Benson-backed bill, a promising step toward whittling down surplus-producing farm price supports, passed the Senate by a towering majority —62 for, Humphrey and ten other Democrats against—and went to the...
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