FDR - Jean Edward Smith [199]
On Thursday, March 16, FDR sent the first genuine New Deal measure to Congress, an agriculture bill intended to raise farm income by reducing agricultural surpluses through a system of domestic allotments. Farmers would be paid directly by the government not to produce crops beyond an allotment set by the secretary of agriculture. Funding for the allotment payments would be provided by processing taxes levied on millers, canners, packers, textile manufacturers, and commodity brokers. Farmers would derive immediate income through the allotment payments, and when the surpluses were reduced the price of farm products was expected to rise proportionately. It was a radical departure, providing unheard-of government control of agricultural production, historically the most individualistic segment of the economy. “I tell you frankly that it is a new and untried path,” Roosevelt told Congress, “but I tell you with equal frankness that an unprecedented condition calls for the trial of new means to rescue agriculture.”42 The measure, eventually known as the Agricultural Adjustment Act, was drafted by Secretary Wallace and Rexford Tugwell following a week of breakneck discussions with farm leaders throughout the country. The bill was followed three weeks later by Roosevelt’s request for legislation to provide federal funding to refinance farm mortgages threatened with foreclosure.43 Like the emergency banking legislation and the economy bill, the agricultural adjustment bill was considered by the House under a closed rule prohibiting amendments. Debate was limited to four hours. On March 22, less than a week after it had been received, the measure passed the House 315–98, all but 24 Democrats voting in favor.
The bill ran into trouble in the Senate. Food and fiber processors had time to mobilize against the processing levy, and a knock-down, drag-out fight ensued. Wallace and Tugwell urged the president to force the bill through without amendments, but FDR was not ready to risk his coalition on an issue so fundamental as farm relief. He instructed Majority Leader Robinson to accept whatever changes were necessary. If a senator’s support could be obtained by adding his amendment, he said, add it. The resulting bill, said one Washington observer, “sought to legalize almost anything anybody could think up.”44 The final sweetener came when Roosevelt agreed that all jobs created to administer the Agricultural Adjustment Act would be outside the civil service—a vast reservoir for legislative patronage. After five weeks of debate, the Senate approved the measure 64–20, having added the president’s mortgage protection plan to the bill. It was signed into law by FDR on May 12.45
Roosevelt saw the farm program as the centerpiece of the New Deal. Not only was agriculture the most perennially depressed sector of the economy, but ever since his experience as a state senator, FDR (who had chaired the Agriculture Committee in Albany) had stressed the relationship between farm prosperity and the well-being of the rest of the country. If farmers had no money to buy what industry produced, the cities suffered as well. The lopsided majority that eventually voted for the bill reflected Roosevelt’s skill in handling the Senate, almost on a man-to-man