<--PREV Doc #651  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #653 Document #652; January 9, 1954 To Ezra Taft Benson Series: EM, AWF, Administration Series The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XV - The Presidency: The Middle Way Part IV: "Pushing ahead along the broad center"; December 1953 to March 1954 Chapter 8: A world "racing toward catastrophe"   Memorandum for the Secretary of Agriculture Re: Your note to me of January 8th about price supports. My suggestion came from the fact that our plan, as I understand it, contemplates the highest price supports only when we are attempting to encourage production.1 If that is the case, I still fail to see any reason why--provided it is possible to describe and limit the conditions under which this would be done--we should not support at 100%. It would seem to me that if an article was so short in this country that we were trying to encourage its production, the price, due to scarcity, would be above parity--possibly on the order of 115% or 120% of parity.2 Consequently, my suggestion came from a thought that we could try to get a little sales appeal in our program.3 However, if all of the "experts" are frightened to death of such a suggestion, I guess it must not be as good as I thought it might be.4 1 Throughout 1953 Eisenhower and Agriculture Secretary Benson had been attempting to develop a new, comprehensive farm program. The Administration's plan, presented to Congress by Eisenhower on January 11, would aim to reduce government involvement in agriculture (see no. 525; see also Ambrose, Eisenhower, vol. II, The President, pp. 159-60). Eisenhower would argue that "unbalanced farm production" caused by rigid price supports on commodities was the central problem. Congress had established flexible price supports, based at between seventy-five and ninety percent of parity, in 1948 and 1949. Subsequently, the farm bloc in Congress had pushed through legislation which froze price supports for basic commodities at ninety percent of parity through 1954 (see nos. 130, 322, and 456). Rigid price supports, Eisenhower would tell Congress, discouraged consumption and helped create surpluses. At the end of 1953, government warehouses held approximately five billion dollars in agricultural commodities, a doubling of the reserves from the previous year (see Public Papers of the Presidents: Eisenhower, 1953, pp. 23-39; New York Times, Jan. 6, 12, 1954; Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, pp. 288-90; and Benson, Cross Fire, pp. 158-72). 2 Eisenhower had phoned Benson on January 7 to make this suggestion (AWF/D). He saw no problems in offering to support, in limited cases, the price of a needed commodity at one hundred percent of parity. But the following day Benson told Eisenhower that the proposal was "unwise." It was "bad in principle," Benson advised, and would make it difficult for the Administration to maintain the more conservative ninety percent limit (AWF/A). 3 The Administration expected a stiff fight from the farm bloc over the issue of flexible price supports. During his January 7 telephone conversation with the President, Benson promised that he would try to put more "sex appeal" into the program (AWF/D; see no. 648). During the next seven months Congress would debate the issue and then pass two acts in July and August. For developments on the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954 and the Agricultural Act of 1954, see nos. 787, 855, and 1071. 4 Previous laws had given the Secretary of Agriculture the authority to apply price supports at levels above ninety percent when required for the national welfare or national security, and Eisenhower would recommend that this provision be continued (Public Papers of the Presidents: Eisenhower, 1953, p. 28). Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. To Ezra Taft Benson, 9 January 1954. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 652. World Wide Web facsimile by The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission of the print edition; Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/652.cfm <--PREV Doc #651  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #653

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