WIDE AUTHORITY

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 9, 10 July 1935, Page 15

WIDE AUTHORITY

CONTROL OF FOODSTUFFS

UNITED STATES ACT

WASHINGTON, June 27. The Secretary of ■ Agriculture,: Mr. Henry Wallace, editor, publisher, and farmer, seems destined to become a Tsar, with complete control over foodstuffs produced and consumed .by the American people. ■ ■■-'■■.!■ '■ This extraordinary power, 'rivalled only when Mr. Hoover was dictator of food supplies and prices during the World War, is alleged to be vested in Mr. Wallace tinder a new Bill which the House of Representatives has adopted. ' Complaints against Mr. Wallace's past policies, and against this new grant of enormous power, have poured into the Agricultural Committee of the Senate, which.now,,holds the Bill. The complaints are striking in their various condemnation of Mr. Wallace. It is alleged that the Minister Wants to set himself up like . Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini in defiance of Ameriacn customs. The Bill provides that the public will be forbidden the right to petition for large sums collected while the Agricultural Act was in These features, new: to legislation, were written by Professor F. Franfurter, the intellectual godfather of most of the young members of the "Brain Trust" still in .Washingtonunder the New Deal.; ■•■■•:■. Under the "re-vamped" Act, Mr. Wallace will be permitted to restrict the production of corn, wheat, hogs, cattle, and cotton. He can levy a, processing tax upon handlers of these foodstuffs, and pay a tax to farmers who enter his crop restriction and plough-under campaign.! ,- The Minister is given power to regulate milk, tobacco, ■ nuts, fruits, vegetables, and to fix minimum prices to growers of these products. He 'is authorised to fix trade practices in the barter and sale of these commodities. . . Mr. Wallace also, is empowered to seize books, records, documents, and correspondence of all food handlers! Several vital cases to test the constitutionality of the Act are still pending.