(2 of 4)
As to the economics of S. 3555, President Coolidge observed that raising domestic crop prices to withhold a crop surplus would make the surplus larger than ever. And as the ever-larger surplus was dumped into foreign markets, foreign prices would go lower and lower. Low food prices abroad would help foreign industries in their competition with U. S. industries, thus depleting the buying power of U. S. workers, who are the natural customers of the U. S. farmer in the first instance.
But even before such economic effects resulted, S. 3555 would, the President thought, encounter insuperable administrative obstacles. To collect equalization fees from an untold number of farmers and middlemen would require a prodigious accounting staff. And before the fees could be collected, their size would have to be fixed, and fixing the fee would require endless investigating of costs. Price-fixing by the Government would be hard enough, dangerous enough, undesirable enough; but S. 3555 failed, moreover, to provide any deterrent to wasteful methods among farmers or middlemen. Besides ignoring the law of Supply & Demand, it reposed extraordinary faith in human efficiency, not to mention honesty.
Fie. Outlining his main objections to S. 3555, President Coolidge became increasingly exercised as he discussed demerits in detail. He employed the following words and phrases: "Cumbersome . . . crudely camouflaged . . . vicious temptations . . . autocratic authority . . . bureaucracy gone mad . . . plague of petty officialdom . . . intolerable tyranny . . . swarms of inspectors . . . evasion and dishonesty . . . impenetrable maze of contracts . . . bewildering snarl of accounting problems . . . catastrophes . . . distortions . . . ponderously futile . . . an extraordinary process of economic reasoning if such it could be called . . . flagrant case . . . insidious attack . . . folly . . . naive . . . preposterous . . . nonsense."
Foe. Spread out through the long message, these words had a cumulative effect and constituted a whacking rebuke to McNary-Haugen Congressmen, whom the President virtually pictured as men who had wrought against instead of for the U. S. farmers. He reminded Congress that he had indicated in his message last December the kind of farm relief legislation which would be approved by the Administration. He accused Congress of making S. 3555 more objectionable than its predecessor, thus, in effect, forcing a veto. He again advocated the passage of legislation which would:
1) Strengthen marketing agencies in the control of the farmers themselves.