(2 of 2)
According to the new law, no one may buy or offer to buy potatoes which are not packed in closed containers approved by the Secretary of Agriculture and bearing proper Government stamps. Penalty: $1,000 fine; for a second offense, a year in jail, an additional $1,000 fine or both. No farmer, under the same penalty, may sell potatoes without such containers and stamps. No farmer can get the necessary official stamps unless he 1) pays a tax of 45ยข a bushel, or 2) receives tax-exemption stamps from the Secretary of Agriculture. No farmer can get tax-exemption stamps except for a potato production quota allotted him by the Secretary of Agriculture. No farmer can get a quota unless he makes an application supported by evidence 1) proving that potatoes were raised on his farm in 1932, 1933, or 1934, and 2) showing how many potatoes he raised and sold in past years.
For the 30,000 big potato growers this official red tape may prove worthwhile if the price of potatoes is boosted. For the rest of the 3,000,000 potato raisers it means nothing but trouble & tribulation. Only exception to getting a quota or becoming a criminal is for those pipsqueak farmers who regularly sell not more than five bushels of potatoes a year.
Such was the law about which the citizens of West Amwell Township complained. To enforce it Mr. Hutson was to have had an initial appropriation of $5,000,000, no great sum in view of the fact that the number of potential potato leggers far exceeds the number of potential liquor leggers under Prohibition. But as a further handicap the appropriation for enforcement failed of enactment with the Third Deficiency Bill. One private consolation Mr. Hutson had: the Supreme Court would probably declare Potato Control unconstitutional since the whole scheme depends on a confiscatory "tax" which makes no pretense of raising revenue.