Senator Johnson in Scathing Denunciation of Hoover's Farm Relief Measure
as Senate Approves Debenture Plan

The following report of Senator Hiram Johnson's speech on the farm bill in the senate, including his defense of the debenture proposal, was published in the Baltimore Sun:

Although it had been agreed to limit debate to twenty-minute speeches after 2 o'clock today, the restriction did not prove to be necessary. The senate was ready to vote and no one except Senator Bingham, of Connecticut, appeared to have any desire to prolong the agony.

After the chamber had been thronged with senators and members of the house to hear Senator Hiram Johnson, Republican, California, rip the administration relief plan to tatters, the other Hiram from Connecticut evidently conceived it to be fitting that he should do something.

Accordingly, he arose and with great deliberation read to the senate the letter of President Hoover, in which the executive enumerated ten reasons why the debenture feature should not be enacted.

                                              Made Defeat Worse
If he had been a wild insurgent from the western prairies instead of the most stand-pat of the stand-patters he could not have accomplished anything more malign. By reiterating the president's stand on the very eve of a result which was foreknown, he served to make a simple defeat for the administration appear like a contemptuous humiliation.

In explaining why he favored the debenture as the simplest and most direct method of farm relief at this time, Senator Johnson also went after the administration part of the bill like an enthusiastic surgeon performing an autopsy. He dismembered it and dissected it and held each severed part up for the inspection of the section of the Republican side to whom the phrases "Government ownership," or "Government in business" gives goose-flesh and shivers. But before entering upon his task he offered some sprightly observations on present-day psychology and the infiltration of buncombe.

"There is a peculiar mutt psychology existing in this land today," he said. "It is a psychology that is satisfied with any definite appeal recatory in character and general in language.
Press, pulpit and politician unite in this mode of influencing this peculiar psychology. Of course, those of us who indulge in mystery stories have read the authors who endeavored to paint the perfect crime. None has ever succeeded. We have, however, in the national life of America today, something of the perfect conspiracy, the conspiracy of press, pulpit and politician, working its way and exercising its sway over a mutt psychology and putting over exactly what the conspiracy of press, pulpit and politician may endeavor to do.

"We can understand something of it, perhaps, in a material era such as ours. We can understand that when a people are engaged in making money alone, they have little time to pay attention to their own grave concerns, or to idealism, or to altruism at all.

                                       Moronic Era of Age of Bunk
"This is the moronic era of the age of bunk. It is an era, sir, in which I am perfectly willing to recognize I am culpable with others, but at least I am different from some others in admitting it, and I can yet laugh.

"The psychology we see evidenced in our everyday occurrences, It [sic] is only a day or two ago we read of a so-called night hostess acquitted in a federal court in New York city amid the enthusiastic acclaim of a great mass of people.

"We read only recently of a death applauded in legislative halls, like clapping your hands as the trap falls at an execution.

                                       Dig at Hoover's Crime Views
"We read again of a great press association meeting in New York city, [sic] a great press association which in fear and trembling waited the fateful words of the greatest executive in all the world, and we read how, when he solemnly and courageously declared himself against crime, that great press association rose in its majesty and might and cheered him to the echo.

"We read, sir, in the press dispatches from abroad how the United States sits in the repudiated League of Nations at Geneva and one day says that we favor reduction in naval armaments, and the next day says that the United States acquiesces in peace time conscription.

"What a marvelous psychology there is in this nation today, and how it is wrought upon by those who desire that it shall continue still this peculiar psychology, and that it shall respond accordingly as we have seen it respond in the last few months."

                                         "Price Fixing," He Asserts
Not content with denouncing bunk in its general features, Senator Johnson got down to details and specific illustrations, and he found them in plenty, it seemed, in the administration part of the farm bill. Despite all the fears that had been expressed about "price fixing" and "putting the government into business," he said the so-called administration plan provided for just that in a degree that could not be exaggerated.

"The bill provides," he said, "for price fixing first, if it means anything. It provides for barter and sale, barter and borrowing. It provides, if it means anything, for taking the government into every conceivable business under the sun in connection with agricultural commodities. It provides, if it means anything, for having the government use everything to put the government into business in a way ordinarily opposed by those who represent the Republican party in the government of the United States.

                                          "Is It Rank Hypocrisy?"
"Each time I qualify what I say to the provision of the bill by the phrase, if it means what it says,'" said Senator Johnson with sneering sarcasm. "The bill either does these things or it does nothing. If it is a piece of rank hypocrisy, if it is a mere fraud, a delusion and a snare, then, of course, we want naught to do with it."

Senator Johnson read from the bill the parts declaring the purposes of the stabilization corporation to be to "act as a marketing agent, to purchase, store, warehouse, process. [sic] sell and market any quantity of the agricultural product," and asked with mockery, "government in business?" Then he went on to read how all the losses of the stabilizing corporation were to be paid from the "surplus reserve fund" or, if there was no such reserve, from the $500,000,000 "revolving fund."

                                              How Losses Are Met
"Gather that now," he exclaimed. "The board pays such sums from the revolving fund as may be necessary for the losses of the operations of the stabilization corporation. The bill proceeds: So loans shall be repaid in the revolving fund by the corporation from future profits from its controlled operation.' What a glorious provision of the bill that is! How any one of us would like to enter into a business enterprise where we might write that all our losses will be paid by the government of the United States and then we promise to pay those losses at some distant day out of the profits we may subsequently make in the same kind of business! Government in business?" sneered the senator as all the opponents of the administration plan beamed with pleasure.

"The whole question is," continued Senator Johnson, turning to the regular Republicans, "Do you mean it or do you not? If you mean it, kiss goodbye to the old platitude of not taking the government into business, kiss goodbye forever the old dogma that has been advanced here day after day and year after year that we should never permit the government to do anything for its people that private initiative or private endeavor may do and make a profit out of."

                                         Glenn Breaks Into Debate
While the senator from California was breezing along in his whirlwind fashion Senator Glenn, the new senator from Illinois, was seized with curiosity to put his hand into the electric fan to see whether it was running. "Is that plan comparable to the Boulder dam bill in which the government is to be repaid out of future profits?" he asked.

"No, it is not comparable to that particular plan," said Senator Johnson. "Of course the senator from Illinois would be exercised by that plan. I recognize that, and I do not blame him. His philosophy and mine are quite different. We are looking out for people out there who require to be protected from devastation by flood. They are only people; that is all; just men and women and little children who require governmental aid. It is a shame and disgrace that that aid should be accorded those children and those women and those men when Mr. Insull or some power magnate might be able to make a profit out of the Boulder dam. That is a terrible thing to do."

"I do not think my interests are any more in common with those of Mr. Insull than are the interests of the distinguished senator from California," responded Senator Glenn, very red in the face. He said he was merely calling attention to the different attitude Senator Johnson had taken, toward the two schemes.

"I quite understand the senator from Illinois," said Senator Johnson, "and I endeavored adequately to answer him." Senator Glenn had found out about the fan. It was running.

                                             Upholds Debenture
In conclusion, Senator Johnson said there was one plain, unequivocal and unambiguous provision in the bill, and that was the debenture feature. "It touches upon the raw of some of our sensitive brethren," he said, "because it touches the tariff, but I recall to them our promise to the people that we would in this session put agriculture on an equality with industry. There is not anything in this bill that puts agriculture upon an equality with industry except the debenture clause."