A farm woman struggles for parity for farmers

By clara Jorgensen

I started to work for 100 percent of parity for farmers in the late 1930s and into the 1940s and now it is the year 2000 and the issue of parity has stood the test of time, as price is always the name of the game.

It certainly is going to be one of the issues in the upcoming Rally for Rural America in Washington DC on March 21.

It's pearheaded by the National Farmers Union and a large number of organizations that have formed an impressive coalition to help us, ditto for the Minnesota Farmers Union who have a very good record of farmer-labor unity.

From 1942 to 1952 we had parity. It worked wonderfully well together with the Farm Security Administration's low-interest loans, at 3 percent interest. The government never lost a penny on that program. Also, we had an ever-normal granary instituted by Fred Stover and Henry Wallace, both from Iowa, despite the fact that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Manufacturing Association came out with policy of trying to eliminate one-fourth to one-third of the farmers, even before World War II had ended, despite the need for food all over the world. When Successful Farming magazine, came out and aped those two conglomerates, I told them to shove it. We didn't need any more enemies pretending to be friends of the farmers.

The money that has been spent to divide the farmers and workers in the city is mind-boggling. I am talking about billions, not millions, which most people cannot even fathom. An example, in the early 1920s Land O' Lakes creameries were started in our town and other small towns as a farmer-friendly cooperative. John Brandt, a reactionary Republican, was made head of the co-operative in 1940. His policy was to tell the farmers that they were business people, sort of a rung above the common worker in the city.

When I questioned this theory at a meeting, his cronies really got excited and huddled together to figure out how they should handle this farm woman who pointed out that farmers had the same problems as labor.

They figuratively borrowed from the same bank as labor and were beholden to pay it back, the same as labor. Land O' Lakes is now a corporation.

There was a period in time when labor was told that farmers were rich and told the farmers that labor was rich. It bore some fruit, as we also had some phony farm organizations that called meetings, underhandedly, condoned the use of arms, and threw in a lot of anti-Semitism, (i.e. the Jews had all the banks and money so that was the cause of the farmers' troubles).

So successful was this ploy that the conveners of the conference of the National Farm and Food Policy, Jan. 12-13, 1986, had to counteract these lies. The conference was held at the Leamington Hotel in Minneapolis. Hundreds came from 60 organizations and 25 states. They got some of the Jewish communities in Minneapolis and St. Paul to host farmers who came to this conference. Farmers staying in Jewish homes helped to dispel these myths.

When Roosevelt died, Vice President Harry Truman took over. In 1948, Truman ran on his own and was in deep trouble. He survived the election only because he came out and appealed to the farmers to vote for him with last-minute promises of firm high-level price supports and his support of the Brennan farm plan.

In 1952, General Eisenhower came on the scene as a presidential candidate. He promised the farmers, in a speech in Kasson, Minn. Sept. 6, 1952, that he and the Republican Party stood behind the amendment to the Basic Farm Act and would continue price supports through 1954 on basic commodities at 90 percent of parity.

He said he firmly believed that "agriculture is entitled to a fair share of the national income. A fair share is not merely 90 percent of parity, but full parity."

He presented this program to the farmers. He appealed to the farmers for their votes. This program has no mental reservations or double talk he said.

He promised to protect not only the six "basic" farm products, but other crops as well.

He said the democratic planners have made the diversified farmer the forgotten man of agriculture and promised for the perishable products "we can and we will find a sound way to do the job."

Farm prices were slipping and farm costs were going up. The farm voters carefully weighed the promises made by Eisenhower. Many were skeptical and some critical.

The complete betrayal by Truman and his record of broken promises: the departure from Roosevelt principles and ditching of that Brennan plan in the platform of the Democratic Convention and the fact that many people had not forgotten his dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Farmers said it was time for a change and with Eisenhower's promise to go to Korea to make the peace, I believe, swayed many of the farmers Their sons had no stomach for this war, going from a life of construction to a life of destruction in foreign land.

They said, "We had to have this war by the powers that be or we would have a depression again." They were children of the depression so they knew what that meant.

After the election, records will show President Eisenhower's complete betrayal of the farmers by appointing Ezra Taft Benson to demolish all farm programs - and he did.

We could never have imagine we could have a McCarthy period, which devastated both the farmer and labor. That we could go into a period of hysteria and witch hunting, borrowing the tactics of Hitler's Germany, so soon after humanity's sacrifices of millions of people all over the world and the loss of thousands of our own young men is almost beyond comprehension.

The betrayal of the farmers was in concert with the betrayal of labor. Labor has had enough of their bought-and-paid-for leadership, so they ousted the whole leadership in the AFL-CIO. Now they are making great inroads in educating people that decent wages, food and housing is their right.

I hope after the rally in Washington D.C, March 21, we'll have real results and guarantee the lies won't have a fertile ground anymore. They say a lie can go around the world many times, but after the truth is known it can't go anymore.

Starting in the 1930s, I worked for years with the Farmer-Labor Party in unity with other organizations and we have accomplished many things.

Only with real farmer-labor unity can we go anyplace in Minnesota or elsewhere. Then the farm women will get the recognition they deserve.

It has been an uphill fight for women because we have been told that we are dependents of our husbands, even though most of the farmers in the world are women.

When you go to the grocery store, remember a farmer sells a bushel and gets paid for a peck. A consumer buys a peck and pays for a bushel.

According to the radio, 30 million people in the United States do not know where their next meal is coming from. Currently 600,000 are in Minnesota, which is part of the breadbasket of the Midwest.

Enough of voting for the rich to make our laws in Congress so they can retire with millions! Try every which way to go to the Rally for Rural America. Pool money or whatever it takes to go.

A farm woman activist from 21 until almost 87 years.

Clara Jorgensen

Askov MN