Agriculture: On the Prongs

Let me introduce myself. I'm Orville Freeman, the man on the end of the pitchfork.

There is more than facetiousness in the way that the Secretary of Agriculture greets many of his audiences. Orville Freeman gave John Kennedy some timely support at the Democratic convention in 1960, and when he was beaten for re-election as Governor of Minnesota, J.F.K. gave him the questionable consolation of becoming Secretary of Agriculture. In the years since, the durable Freeman has been impaled repeatedly, but never fatally, on the prongs of one sharp controversy after another: crop controls, immense commodity surpluses, the Billie Sol...