"I am therefore obliged," wrote President Coolidge last week, reverting, after some 5,500 more emphatic words, to the formal executive monotone, "to return Senate Bill 3555 . . . without my ap-proval."
Another name for Senate Bill 3555 was the Surplus Control Act and another, as everyone knows, was the McNary-Haugen Bill, and another, according to some advisers of the U. S. Farmer, was "Salvation." The name finally applied to it by President Coolidge, as to its predecessor of last year, was, in effect, "Monkey Busi-ness."
How many U. S. farmers actually read the bill, or read President Coolidge's veto message, will never be known. Historians, studying another debacle of agricultural legislation in the U. S., pointed out causes and clauses.
Fee. S. 3555 proposed to set up a Federal fund from which cooperative associations of farmers could borrow money to help them market their products. That was all right with President Coolidge. S. 3555 proposed a Federal farm board to administer the fund. That was all right with President Coolidge. S. 3555 proposed that when the producers of a given commodity had produced more of that commodity than they could market in an "orderly" fashion, or more than they were willing to try to market with the aid of the loan fund only, that an "equalization fee" should be levied upon each unit of the commodity in question, to augment the loan fund. That was not all right with President Coolidge. S. 3555 further proposed that separate special councils be formed to advise the Federal board on the status of each & every commodity, so that the board would know when to levy the "equalization fees." That was not all right with President Coolidge, either. President Coolidge opposed the "equalization fee" for several reasons, some basic, some specific. Specifically he objected because S. 3555 provided that the fee might be levied upon the farmer's product any where between the field it grew in and the place where it was consumed. Naturally, at whatever point in the commodity's progress from farmer to consumer the fee was levied, the commodity's price would rise automatically. Ultimate payment of the fee would thus be by the consumer, not by the producer. In other words, the "equalization fee" was not a self-help device for the farmers but a subtle sales tax upon the whole country. The "equalization fee" was to be levied on imports, also. It thus became, in simple fact, a tariff. President Coolidge objected to a sales tax or a tariff administered by a Federal farm board, for the reason that control of taxation and the tariff are carefully vested in the Congress by the Constitution. More over, President Coolidge could see that not even the proposed farm board would have ultimate control of the farm tax or the farm tariff, for behind the board, with power to command, were the proposed advisory councils for each commodity. Aside from economic considerations, S. 3555 looked unconstitutional. President Coolidge attached to his veto message a 6,000-word ruling from Attorney General Sargent to that effect.