Farms and Arms

Chester Davis, the new farm-food administrator, bosses 42,000 Dept. of Agriculture employees, but his authority practically funs out there. His organization is a box within Secretary Wickard's box and his power is shelved apart from the War Manpower Commission, the WPB, and the OPA, which all share in agricultural administration.

Half a million farmers went to war in 1942, starting a manpower shortage which is already on its way to reducing agricultural output for 1943. Although the President has predicted that 3,000,000 farm workers will be deferred by the end of the year, little short of a labor freeze can stop them from transferring to more remunerative essential industries. Military harvest furloughs and a Land Army of unskilled women and children can not hope to replace the experienced farmers who have compared their daily average wage of $3 with the $6 pay check of inexperienced shipbuilding labor, and have answered Henry Kaiser's full-page advertisement. Yet Davis can only knock at WMC's doors, suggesting and hoping.

Farm machinery needs take on added importance in the face of a labor scarcity. The current curtailment to twenty per cent of the 1940 allotment has been recognized as a mistake by the WPB, and it is known, that the figure has been upped in practice to sixty per cent. Yet when all agricultural equipment amounts to only one-fiftieth of the nation's metal consumption surely Davis deserves more than an advisory voice in falling his needs.

The crippling decentralization goes even further. Another agency under Prentiss Brown rules farm prices. The only insurance that Davis will be just another electron flying around the nucleus of the OPA is the possibility of his referring disputes to stabilization director Byrnes. Function stands apart from power, for Wickard is a member of the Economic Stabilization Board while Davis is not. Wickard continues to represent the United States on the Combined Food Board although Davis needs information on lend-lease food aid to manage production and distribution. Overburdening executives is one thing; halving authority is another. If active organization and comprehensive administration are the aims of presidential appointments, specific blueprints will have to supersede naive dreams of cooperation.