Dear Ezra: I am glad to have your note of March eighteenth, but frankly I feel that there is little need for you to enumerate again all the advantages both of us believe should result from our present farm program. I am not only familiar with these but have time and time again supported them publicly.1
In your efforts to improve Federal programs affecting agriculture I have always supported you enthusiastically; I shall continue to do so. But in what follows I shall attempt to give you some of my thinking about the legislative procedures through which we hope to secure an improvement in those and other necessary laws.2 I think my text could well be the old German aphorism, "Never lose the good in seeking too long for the best," or as some say it, "The best is always the enemy of the good."3
I was impressed by the apparent attitude of some of the leaders at the meeting Tuesday. They, while announcing their continuing approval of the flexible price support system believe that we, the members of the Administration, are now guilty of inflexibility.4 Conversations with Joe Martin and Bill Hill confirm this impression of their attitude.5
A number of Republican Congressmen have been advised by such individuals as Senator Schoeppel to run for the Congress on their own individual platforms, repudiating completely such items of the Administration programs as they do not like.6
One of the programs leading toward this kind of division is the Reciprocal Trade Bill. Others are the Mutual Security Program, and specific features of the Farm Program.7
I thoroughly believe that the majority of Americans approves of the direction of movement of the Administration’s Farm Program. I believe the same thing about our Mutual Security and Foreign Trade Programs. But, as I noted in our conversation yesterday morning, there are often considerable differences, at any one time, between the political thinking of the country and the political actions taken by the Congress.
It is clear that if this kind of trend toward political individualism is going to continue in the current session of the Congress, there will be an increasing number of defections. The result will be that the most vitally important legislative measures for the long term good of the United States will be weakened or defeated, and the Republican strength in future elections will be badly damaged.
For five years we have been working hard to get Federal Programs affecting American agriculture on a sounder basis. I most sincerely believe that we have done this and for this great progress you have been primarily responsible. But we should observe that never in any one year have we gotten exactly what we wanted. Even when we first got some flexibility in farm prices, we had to take it on a step by step basis.
All I want to say here is that I believe it is not good Congressional politics to fail to listen seriously to the recommendations of our own Congressional leaders. Charlie Halleck, Les Arends, Joe Martin and Bill Hill from the House, as well as Bill Knowland, Everett Dirksen and others from the Senate, will find it difficult to keep their cohorts solidly together in critical moments unless we are ready to make what they consider are some necessary concessions from time to time.
So far as you and I are concerned, we certainly can have nothing to lose or to gain, except the satisfaction that we may derive from doing the very best job within our power for the country’s good. But, sometimes in the workings of a democratic society, it is not sufficient merely to be completely right. We recall that Aristides lost the most important election of his life because the Athenian people were tired of hearing him called "The Just."8
As of this moment, I can see no way in which you can logically take action that our best Congressional friends would consider as an amelioration of their legislative difficulties. But I do believe that in future planning we should avoid advanced positions of inflexibility. We must have some room for maneuver, or we shall suffer for it.9
With warm regard, As ever
