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A Card for Drew. Thus fortified, Benson endures violent criticism with the demeanor of a Boy Scout leader (which he is) in a den of noisy cubs. He also turns the other cheek: last Christmas, he took pains to send a card to one of his most vitriolic critics, Columnist Drew Pearson, whom he studiously skips in reading the newspaper.
In line with the Mormon concept that the family should share the father's business, the Bensons have made the U.S. farm problem their problem. As the result of long discussions at home, the Secretary's wife once got him to publicize milk-dispensing machines to help relieve the dairy-product surplus. Flora Benson attends many of his press conferences, and occasionally finds time from her duties at home (she has no maid, does her own housework) to make a speech. In Toledo last week for a speech at a Republican women's meeting, she said: "I've enjoyed working on a farm with my husband. I've cooked for threshers and we've gone through what the farmers are going through today." Asked to define her role in shaping the destiny of the American farmer, she answered without hesitation: "To be a true and loyal companion to my husband, be interested in his work, do away with surpluses and get the soil bank passed."
Lesson in Zigzag. Like many another member of the Eisenhower Cabinet, Benson went into his job with his firm convictions, and then discovered that Washington had something to teach him about the kind of give-and-take that makes government function. In his first major policy statement in 1953, he said that "price supports should provide insurance against disaster" and that "inefficiency should not be subsidized in agriculture." Today, without being so doctrinaire, he says: "I have been confident all the way along that what we are doing is best for farmers. I have no interest other than that."
Essentially both statements mean the same thing—i.e., that he wants to wipe out the rigid, 90%-of-parity price supports adopted in wartime, because he is convinced that they only build up the surplus and will not really sustain prices. He favors a flexible price-support system ranging down to 75% of parity for crops in surplus and up to 90% for crops in demand, because he feels this will discourage production of surpluses and give the law of supply and demand a chance to operate to the farmers' eventual benefit.
In 1954, after Benson abruptly cut dairy support prices by 15 parity points, the President called his Secretary of Agriculture to the White House and asked whether the action might not have been too abrupt. Then Old Soldier Eisenhower drew some lines on a piece of scratchpaper to show Old Farmer Benson that, in military action, there are two ways to reach an objective—the direct way, and by a zigzag approach. Advised Ike: try to understand the merits of the zigzag too.