Agriculture: How to Shoot Santa Claus

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down-to-earth reminder that with an election coming up, the Administration could hardly afford to let wheat prices fall to $1 a bushel. The farmers took Shuman at his word and resoundingly defeated the plan. Ten months later, Congress passed a voluntary program with the $2 support price.

Like Greece. The U.S. farming community, never noted for consistency, today embraces almost as many splinter groups as the Greek Parliament. The Farm Bureau's biggest and noisiest rival, the Denver-headquartered National Farmers Union, is at the opposite end of the ideological and political spectrum. Headed since 1940 by Kansas-born Jim Patton, 62, Farmers Union has 750,000 members, strongly supports the Government's hand on the plow. Says Patton, whose favorite pastime is taking pokes at the Farm Bureau: "What Charlie Shuman doesn't realize is that we've got the welfare state and we've had it for 30 years. And we're not going to give it up unless we lose the ballot box."

Between the Farm Bureau on the right and the Farmers Union on the left stands the granddaddy of all U.S. farm organizations, the 98-year-old National Grange, with 800,000 members. Master of the Grange is Indiana-born Herschel D. Newsom, 65, a roly-poly Quaker and lifelong Republican, who believes that "government has a proper role in agriculture."

Newest and brashest of all is the militant National Farmers Organization. Headquartered in Corning, Iowa, N.F.O. opposes Government farm programs as vociferously as the Farm Bureau; on other matters it is even farther to the right. Under President Oren Lee Staley, 42, N.F.O. (estimated membership: 200,000 in 25 states) maintains that the only workable approach to the farm problem is to control the flow of supplies to market. Staley claims that contracts with six of the nation's 15 major hog processors are now in effect, and that grain marketing is next on the agenda.

Father Worked, Mother Did. The Farm Bureau's many critics claim that Shuman's homespun ways are an affectation—that he actually rehearses his rusticity. "It takes a lot of practice for a girl to kiss like an amateur," sniffs one acquaintance. In Charlie Shuman's case, naturalness comes naturally.

A bona fide son of the Moultrie County soil his family has farmed since 1853, Shuman has deep roots in the fertile farmland around Sullivan (pop. 4,000). The nucleus of the present Shuman farm has been in the family for 112 years. Great-Grandfather Charles Shuman was a Bavarian shoemaker who immigrated to the U.S. in 1835, changed the spelling of his last name from Schumann ("to Americanize it," says Charlie), and settled in Philadelphia. His son, also Charles, grew up and headed West to seek his fortune. When he got to Sullivan, he ran out of money, went to work as a hired hand on the farm of Major Addison McPheeters, a Scots settler who won his spurs in the Black Hawk War. Before long, Charles Shuman married the major's daughter Mary and took over the farm. They had three children, one of whom was Bliss, Charlie Shuman's father.

"My mother was the doer of the family," Shuman recalls. "My father just worked hard." One of three children, Shuman grew up on the farm, drove a horse and buggy the four miles into Sullivan to high school. He graduated with honors from the University of