 Good evening. This is Frank Knight. The Lone Gene Watch on my wrist. The Lone Gene Watches at your jewelers are examples of 85 years of experience in the art of fine watchmaking. How could you look in our factory? You'd find many machines of advanced design, the need for which was dictated by experience. Many are unique with Lone Gene, designed and made in the Lone Gene Factory and found nowhere else. But machines alone could never make a watch of Lone Gene quality. Today, as always, essential parts of every Lone Gene Watch are given that final touch of perfection, that precious extra hand finishing that distinguishes the truly fine watch. With the Lone Gene Watches not so made, it could not have won its grand prizes. The gold medals, its observatory awards, its countless honors in fields of precise timing. Today, more than ever, throughout the world, no other name on a watch means so much as Lone Gene, the world's most honored watch. The Lone Gene Chronoscope each week looks for the truth in the important issues of the hour and here to discuss these issues are our co-editors. Mr. Henry Haslett, a political economist of respected judgment and contributing editor of Newsweek magazine and Mr. William Bradford Huey, editor of the American Mercury. Our distinguished guest for this evening is Mr. Alan Blair Klein, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation. In this spontaneous and unrehearsed discussion, the opinions are necessarily those of the speakers. Mr. Klein, you are the American Farm Bureau Federation is the largest farm organization in the country, isn't it? That is right. I'd like to find out what you think of the present bills that the House and the Senate has just passed. Do you think there are better or worse than the present law? Well, now I take it that what you're talking about is a word defense measure and not some peculiar agricultural proposition. Yes, that is the control bill. Well, so far as the war production measure concerned, it has been our firm conviction that the price control regulations go too far, that many other provisions of the bills are essential and that the Senate bill is somewhat better than that of the House. Why do you think that the Senate bill is a little better than the House? Well, take a specific example. We believe that the indirect controls are far superior to the direct controls. We wish to control inflation and the Senate goes a little further in the authority provided for credit controls. Mr. Klein, tonight we're talking to a lot of people who are worried about the price of farm products. You are head of one of the most powerful lobbyists in America, aren't you? Well, accepting for the federal lobby. You are really a head of a pressure group, aren't you? I would admit that. You are a farmer and you are interested in the welfare of farmers. Yes, and we think that the welfare of farmers and the welfare of the rest of us are pretty close to the same thing. But essentially you are interested in higher and higher prices for farm products. We're interested in the terms of trade. We want the farmer to be able to do well and if other things are cheap, farm prices can be cheap. If other things are high, farm prices have to be higher, we go broke. Well, you've done a, pardon me, you've done a rather remarkable thing, your organization. You are not only against price control for farmers, but you are against price control for everybody, aren't you? I mean, you don't want to control the other fellow's prices any more than you want to see farm prices. Certainly not. We think that the price control thing, it actually crosses up some of the most fundamental things which have contributed to America's production record. And we are convinced that this production record simply couldn't take place if you took out all the freedom of choice involved in the individuals buying things on his own. Well, you think if this meat price rollback had gone through in the form in which Mr. DeSalle had proposed it, it would have brought about shortages of meat in the country? Well, I noticed that the Department of Agriculture figures on cattle on feed and the corn belt indicated they're 8% less now than a year ago and yet cattle numbers in the country are high. This is simply the proposition of a lot of farmers in the corn belt trying to figure out how to make a living. Now, the farmers in the farm belt, sir, speaking of price control, you've accepted government control of farming in America as a reality, haven't you? Yes, to a limited extent. The argument is just over the extent of government control in this country now, isn't it? It's over the extent and, after all, if one is a realist, he knows that laissez-faire is in the past and that there are controls in business, there are controls in labor and that agricultural prices are still the free interest. All of your farmers, both Republicans and Democrats, now admit that the government is properly informing. Well, I don't know any outfit that differentiates less between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to public policy. I'm glad you believe that the government ought to help you and the government ought to stabilize your prices and the government ought to help assure you of what you consider a fair price for your products. At the same time, we think that if the government was to guarantee high and profitable prices to farmers, this is completely inconsistent with high standards of living and agriculture. Would you say that we now have a certain amount of socialism in American agriculture? Well, socialism is a kind of a loaded term. We've got a certain amount of the kind of responsibility on the part of the national government which some people define as socialism, but I think we think better if we use some other term. Well, you've been arguing for a free price system recently, the American Farm Bureau Federation. A relatively free price system. Well, what do you think that that would achieve and where does the relativity come in? Well, let us go back 80 years. The leadership in production was in Great Britain, in distribution, banking, and so forth, transportation, communication. Currently, it's in the United States. We think that there's some fundamental change has taken place and the leadership came to the United States and that if you take the function of price out, that it's somehow interrelated with the kind of freedom of choice and incentive system without which the American system simply wouldn't be the American way. Well, I'm sorry, Bill. I just wanted to ask this, but a lot of people in this country, perhaps most people in this country, believe today that if you took price controls off, prices would soar. Now, do you believe that? The fact of the matter is that I believe that we could have a considerable little depression in this country if the government really wanted it without price control. Do you think that the prices of farm products are too high now? Well, relatively, the prices of farm products are just not in a bad shape. The fact of the matter is that a lot of people go back to June 1st last year, but we were in quite a little agricultural swamp June 1st. Several billion dollars below the net income which we had had in 48 prints. You mean the farm these people were? That's right. Would you care to predict whether specific items such as meat will go higher from today, or do you think that the price of meat will fall? It is very difficult to do this thing. I would say this, that the most important question involved in that is whether we get a bill we can pay nationally, and whether we divide the program to pay the bill. This means taxes. But what does this mean to the housewife and in the average American city? What does she have to look forward to now? Do you think that her dollar will buy more groceries or less from this point on? Well, a lot of it depends, you see, on whether the dollar is good. If everything is cheap, then it's dollars that have gone wrong. If everything is high priced, it's dollars that have gone wrong. Doesn't some of it depend on the farm lobby, sir? Well, no. The efficacy of the farm lobby. Let me make this point. The strongest farm organization in America, this is American Farm Bureau. We have spent the last three years arguing with the politicians who wanted to give us higher guaranteed prices than we were willing to accept, as we just aren't guilty on this problem. You mean you've been down in Washington arguing for lower guarantees? This is in the record. Well, I would like to have you expand on this particular point. Your reason for thinking that prices would not run away if price controls were taken off is, I understand it, that price control is irrelevant to the problem of inflation. That's quite right. In other words, that inflation is caused by something else, by the increase in money and credit. Isn't that the position of the Farm Bureau? Increase of money and credit and unbalanced federal budget and paying the bill with new money. This cheapens everybody's money. Well, what would you have the federal government do about money and credit? Well, the first thing, well, they're out money and credit. The first thing is they guard the money. If the traditional method has been to just unbalance the federal budget and then print some new money and pay the bill. We print bonds, sell them to banks, but it does the same thing. This tradition. You'd have to overcome this one by getting a bill we could pay, as we're free to do, but we got to do it. And second, we've got to have an intelligent management of the money supply. This is the cheap money policy. This is the business where after Korea, we furnished an unlimited reserve to the banks. We convinced people that money was going to... Goods are going to be high priced, so they'd want to buy it, and then we furnished them the money through the banks. I'd like to ask just two more questions, sir. And they involve generalizations. You tell me that up till now, the American farmer has made a certain surrender, a certain amount of surrenders and freedom, in order to get a certain amount of security from the government. Now, do American farmers want to surrender more of their freedom to get more security today? Or is the trend in the other direction that you want more freedom? I would say that the best hope that I could hold out, and again, there are many farmers and they're individualists to a certain extent, is that we would sort of consolidate our gains where we are and learn to live with what we have and begin to appreciate the problems involved in really creating an individual responsibility in the country consistent with the survival of freedom, the basic freedoms. Farmers are thinking about freedom today then, and they are thinking about encroachments of federal authority on that freedom. There's no doubt about that. How about the freedom of the consumer too? Do you feel that if this present price bill is extended as the prospect is that we're going to run into rationing? We're going to have rationing in the next year? Well, if the price control bill remains as inefficient as it has currently been, and what I mean by that is that it doesn't really try to hold down prices, then you won't have to have rationing. But if at any point, let us say on meat, we decided to lower it 30% from what people were willing to pay, you've decided not to use price to distribute the commodity and you must use coupons. I have just one other question, certainly about time is about up, but the battle has been going on in Washington and we understand that the President has been fighting four more controls and you've been fighting for fewer. Now, have you been supported more by the Republicans or by the Democrats in Congress for what you were trying to get? That's a very difficult question, but I would say that we had been insufficiently supported by either. The Republicans have not supported your program? They certainly haven't done a very good job of it. As a matter of fact, if we want to capitalize on our traditions, we can have things freely available in the marketplace and if we don't, I think they're going to get scarce and we'll have to ration them. But you did make the statement that you were not aided by an effective opposition to the administration in Washington. That is a fair statement. Well, I'm sorry. I'm afraid our time is up. Thank you very much, Mr. Klein, for being with us tonight. The editorial board for this edition of the Lone Jean Chronoscope was Mr. Henry Haslett and Mr. William Bradford Huey. Our guest was Mr. Alan Blair Klein, President of the American Farm Bureau Federation. Throughout the world, no other name on a watch means so much as Lone Jean, the world's most honored watch. Honored for excellence and elegance by ten World's Fair Grand Prizes, twenty-eight gold medal awards, and highest honors for accuracy from the leading government observatories of the world. Whenever you have an occasion to purchase a watch for yourself or as a gift, it's well to remember that if you pay seventy-one fifty or more for a watch, you're paying the price of a Lone Jean, and you should insist on getting a Lone Jean. World honored for excellence, elegance, greater accuracy, and long life. Lone Jean, the world's most honored watch, sold and serviced by more than four thousand leading jewelers from coast to coast, who proudly display the emblem, Agency for Lone Jean Wet Nor Watches. Next week at this same time over the CVS television network, the Lone Jean Wet Nor Watch Company will again present the Lone Jean Chronoscope, the television journal of the important issues of the hour, and our guest will be Mr. Paul G. Hoffman. This is Frank Knight speaking for Lone Jean, the world's most honored watch, and Wet Nor, a distinguished companion to the world's honored Lone Jean. Both products of the Lone Jean Wet Nor Watch Company since 1866, maker of watches of the highest character. This is CVS, the Columbia Broadcasting System.