July 19, 1971
Page 25948
THE FORGOTTEN AMERICAN FARMER (Wisconsin State College, Stevens Point, Wis., May 16, 1971)
I'm proud to speak in a congressional district that has gone in a few short years from Melvin Laird to David Obey.
I've heard of good trades before – but even the Green Bay Packers have never done that well.
A week or so ago, the President celebrated Salute to Agriculture Day by throwing a big dinner for farmers at the White House. Over a hundred people were on the guest list. But only sixteen of them were farmers. . . . I guess the President realizes that, after four years of his administration, there may be just a few farmers left in the United States.
At the dinner, the President was asked if he was going to serve butter. He replied: "Oh, butter – is that the margarine with the extra food coloring?"
Even though farm income may be going down, I think he should give the administration credit for the things that are going up ... unemployment, prices, and the cost of postage stamps.
At this rate, the recession will last as long as a speech by my friend Hubert Humphrey. I promise to finish this speech in a lot less time than that.
And I would like to begin by sharing with you some fascinating facts I read the other day.
You would be more likely to hear about them in a classroom than in a stump speech. But I think they tell us something important about our business here tonight – and about the everyday business of farms and factories across America.
Scientists have discovered that the physical structures they call genes are the essential building blocks of life. From generation to generation, genes transmit the traits that make every man human and each man individual. They are our most direct link to the past – and our only certain bequest to the future.
There are three billion people on this planet and each of them has 100,000 genes. But if we put all those genes together, the result would be a ball only one millimeter in diameter. That is the small margin between our humanity and a mere physical protoplasm.
And there is another, equally small margin that we must also live with – because we could not live without it. The atmosphere surrounding our earth – the atmosphere that gives us the air we breathe and the water we take for granted – is just a thin layer of life support in an almost empty universe. Above it, there is only the black darkness of outer space. Below it, there is only the black darkness of the inner earth. We survive by the grace of a resource we have constantly contaminated. We can endanger it – and we can destroy it and ourselves.
Some of us were concerned about that threat years ago. But only in the last few years have our warnings been heeded. Only recently have Americans realized how fragile our environment really is. And only recently have we started to see the similar fragility of our own genetic structures.
Now we know that everything that is important is also fragile. And that simple truth applies not only to the earth God made – but to earth man has remade. Our political and social institutions sustain us only if we sustain them. There is no invisible hand protecting our principles or our economy. Not fate, but the work of our own hands, is what keeps us prosperous and free.
And when our hands falter or fail, the strain on our fragile but vital institutions is felt immediately. In recent years, we have often faltered and occasionally even failed. And you can now feel the strains everywhere in America.
You can see them on the nighttime streets of our cities – where there is often no one to see and the only thing that walks the sidewalks after dark is fear.
You can hear them in the words of the Vietnam veterans against the war – who found out what it was like over there and wonder now whether anything is right back here.’
And you can sense the strains in the new divisions that separate our country – black and white, young and old, longhair and hardhat.
We have not tended to America's needs. We have neglected America's ideals. We have
damaged the fragile institutions that hold America together and move America forward. The most recent damage is the recession inflicted on the National economy by failing Federal policies. Our economy is supposed to provide prosperity for our people. In 1971, it is instead putting working men and women out of work – and pushing productive farmers into bankruptcy. We are painfully rediscovering how fragile our economy really is.
In the last two years, unemployment in America has soared to over 6%. That's not just a number – that number is people – people standing in welfare lines instead of payroll lines – people nailing a "For Sale" sign to their homes because they can no longer meet the monthly mortgage payments. And that number is also your friends and neighbors. Between February, 1969, and February, 1971, unemployment down the road in Wausau climbed from 1400 to 2700.
The administration's game plan traded away Wausau's jobs for lower prices – but the only prices that are going down in 1971 are farm prices. And that is one place where income was already far too low.
The average non-farm family makes $8,800 a year – $3,000 more than the average farm family. The administration responded to this injustice with the agricultural act of 1970 – an act that threatened an even further decline in farm income. I am proud that I voted against it. And I am proud to speak up against a policy that reduced the parity ratio to 69% in April, 1971 – and then attempted to cover up the reduction by changing the base period for calculating the ratio.
No wonder the decline in the number of farmers has accelerated. No wonder farmers have to work away from their fields for nearly 50% of their income. No wonder family farms are disappearing so fast that we may soon see them only in a Grandma Moses painting.
The only wonder is that the administration still refuses to act. In the midst of this crisis, President Nixon remains the first President since Herbert Hoover who has not sent a farm message to the Congress. And he is the only President ever who tried to abolish the Department of Agriculture. What he may succeed in abolishing is the security and growth of American agriculture.
A county fair on the White House lawn is no substitute for a better life on Wisconsin's farms.
And the mere promise to restore prosperity in our factories and farms is no substitute for new jobs and a milk parity price of 90%. From the middle of 1969 until November, 1970, a coalition of farm organizations constantly asked for an appointment with the President. Their request was constantly rejected. The administration apparently did not want to listen to them – just as it does not want to listen to the voices of peaceful protest against the war. And the refusal to listen is turning a fragile society into a brittle society. It is eroding our bonds of trust and our tradition of prosperity. Refusing to listen – to farmers or students or United States Senators – is no service to America. It is the way to make a brittle society break.
None of us wants that – now or ever.
We know that there is only a thin margin between the future of America and the failure of America.
If we can create such a society in our land, we will strengthen the fragile enterprise we call America. We will shape a future worthy of the hopes our fathers brought with them from the old world to the new.
I believe that we can do that much. I believe that we can do no less. And I believe that we can do even more. The Democratic Party has pointed the way – in Wisconsin and in the Nation. And the people will follow us – all the way to Washington in 1972.