 It's time for the Lone Gene Chronoscope, a television journal of the important issues of the hour, brought to you every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. A presentation of the Lone Gene Wittner Watch Company, maker of Lone Gene, the world's most honored watch, and Wittner, distinguished companion to the world-honored Lone Gene. Good evening. This is Frank Knight. May I introduce our co-editors for this edition of the Lone Gene Chronoscope? Larry Lusser from the CBS television news staff, and Lewis Banks, associate editor of Time magazine. Our distinguished guest for this evening is the Honorable William A. Dawson, United States representative from Utah. Corruption is an ugly word, but its outbreaks are not confined to either political party in this country. Now, some people blame it on the relatively low salaries paid to our elected and appointed officials. But our guest tonight holds some opposing views. Congressman Dawson, why do you oppose a pay increase for congressmen at this time? Well, Mr. Lusser, I don't particularly oppose it in the view that congressmen are not entitled to more money, but I feel that as boards of directors, that's exactly what we are, we shouldn't be raising our own salaries when we're asking everyone else in the country to tighten their belt and economize and us go ahead and raise our salaries. I just think it might start out a chain reaction and government employees all the way down the line would be asking for an increase. But Congressman, isn't it true that one of your colleagues in the house has already packed up and gone home because he said he couldn't afford to support his family in Washington? Well, of course there are some who think they can't and I think they might go home for some other reasons, but I think that any man who can't get along in Washington on $15,000 a year just as well pack up his bag and go home. We don't live the life of Riley down there, I can tell you that, but we do get along nicely. Now, I have a wife and two children and we rent a house paying $250 a month and we still are able to get along. And I believe the people sent us back here to be as frugal as we possibly could and even live like some of the rest of the people live back home. And I just think it's wrong thing for us from a psychological standpoint with an unbalanced budget to ask the people in this country to help us balance it and cut down and then for us who set an example by nearly doubling our salaries. It just isn't right. I was opposed to it before and I'm opposed to it now. But incidentally, Congressman Dawson, how are you a frugal Congressman managing to get anything worked on now that the McCarthy hearings are on? Are you doing anything? Well, of course, maybe people might think we ought to have our salaries cut off while the McCarthy hearings are going on because all of us are laying off. But I want to tell you, Larry, that that isn't the case. Work is going on in Congress just the same as usual and a lot of hard work. And it's just a shame that we have to be crowded out of the headlines, you might say, to let the people look at this show that's going on there because we're all working. Well, speaking of unnoticed work, not much has been heard about Mr. Benson's flexible farm price support program. And I believe as a friend of Mr. Benson's, you've been his great defender. Now, what I wondered if you think when this does come out, when the program is ready and Congress, it comes before Congress, if the Republicans will cut their political throats with a program of flexible price support? Mr. Banks, I don't think that's true. I don't think that anyone's going to cut their political throat by defending Secretary Benson. And I'll tell you why. I think that the American people are just too smart and know too much about what's going on in this world to be fooled by this high rigid price support program. Now, this is a brave position, though, in the way, because as I understand it, if Congress took no action, the law would just revert to the act of 1949, which is a flexible support act anyway, and then you wouldn't be taking this risk. Why do you do it? You'd be back in the old Anderson program. Well, that's right. That's exactly what would happen. But you say taking a risk. I don't think we are taking a risk because I'm convinced that once the American people know the truth and know what's right, I think that they'll go along. That's the reason I say that some of the politicians are going to find themselves fooled because I believe that even the farmers themselves are way ahead of them on this thing. Now, you can't tell me that the American people are going for any program, which costs us a half a million dollars a day alone in storage charges. In other words, that's what we're paying to store some of these surplus commodities today, a half a million dollars a day. And the thing that's happened on dairy commodities, for instance, is that we priced the dairy commodities right off of the market. You had butter up around 80 cents a pound with high rigid government supports. As a result, the housewife just can't buy butter. Well, when you talk about the American people, of course, we usually divide up the population of the United States politically, and we're speaking about the farm vote now. Well, the farmers go along with this cut in parity of butter, for instance. I think the average farmer will. Now, you've heard it said that this farm program, the rigid farm support program, is designed to help the average little farmer. But the fact of the matter is that it's been helping the big farmer and not the little farmer. There are only 23% of all the farmers in this country who get any farm of supports, and that's for just a few chosen commodities. And of that 23%, approximately, I have some figures here that might interest you, of the 23% who get supports, 80% of the money the government uses to purchase or loan on crops is received by 2 million large farmers. The 3 million small farmers share in only about 15% of the annual expenditures by the government. Now, here's something that's interesting, too. Well, actually, psychologists tell us Congressman Dawson that the way to break a habit is to use a substitute, and that goes for making money, too. Now, is Secretary Benson going to offer the farmers any substitute for this price support for dairy products? Well, yes, his substitute is that he's going to encourage them to get better marketing methods to develop new uses for farm products and to enlarge their markets. That's the principal thing. Now, just today, I received from the Department of Agriculture a can of condensed tomato juice in dry farm powder. And that was mixed with water and it turned out much better than the regular canned tomato juice. Now, you see out in my country where we raise a lot of tomatoes, we're required to pay a high freight rate to get that liquid tomato juice onto the market. Now, by dehydrating it, we can turn out a better product and get it onto the market cheaper. Now, that is what they're attempting to do. The same department developed the frozen orange juice and you can see what it's done to the orange industry. Now, that's what's needed. The thing that's happening is that they've got products up so high that they're priced right out of the market. People can't afford to buy them. And I know even in my own family, we've started using margarine because it tastes just about as good and many people won't want to go back to butter. Well, Congressman Dawson, I think it's very courageous for you to support Secretary Benson's program to cut parity on farm prices. Will the rest of the Republican Party go along with Eisenhower's appointees program? Well, of course, that's a question. Many of the Republicans in the Midwest and in the dairy section up around Wisconsin and Minnesota are fearful of the results and they're wavering. And even the Agricultural Committee in the House, I think, is going to report out a rigid price support bill, which is contrary to the administration's wishes. But I feel that when it gets onto the floor of the House, you will find a lot of Eastern congressmen and Western congressmen and others who are not going to be swayed by this so-called political angle who are going to give the administration a lot of support. When you come right down to it, about 85% of all the congressmen come from urban areas anyway, don't they? Well, I haven't the exact percentage, but a good many of them in the House. Of course, when you get into the Senate, it's a different proposition because each state has two senators. Well, Congressman Dawson, your state at Utah is also a rich mineral state now. Now that the administration has started this new stockpiling of minerals, is that doing your miners any good? Well, yes, that's helping Mr. Lusser. The lead zinc industry, particularly out in the West, is in a bad way. Due to the importation of cheap foreign metals, they've practically been put out of business. And so this stockpiling program is going to be some help. But the difficulty is that when the nation takes on additional metals in the stockpile, that increases the price of the metals. And the foreigners can come in here and bring their metals in and take advantage of our high market. And so it means just as much to them as it does to us. And eventually the market is again flooded and we're right back to where we began before. Congressman Dawson, when you were re-elected last year, you said that your fight was going to be to keep the Republican Party liberal. So as a final question, I'd like to ask you, how is your fight going? Well, I think we're making some headway. I believe the Eisenhower administration has formulated a very liberal program. Some people say, well, you haven't gone far enough. You haven't accomplished enough. But you'd be surprised what we have done down there. I wish we had time to go through some of these liberal policies that have been adopted. But I think we're making some headway. And might I say this, that when I say liberal, I don't mean socialistic. I think the liberal policies that we are adopting are along what you might call conservative lines, if you can reconcile those two statements. But we are going on a good sound solid foundation. And I think if the Eisenhower administration is given some more time and a little bigger majority in Congress, you will find that there's going to be a program that the American people is going to think a lot of. Well, my answer is we have a few seconds left. Do you think that the policies carried out so far is going to win a majority for the Eisenhower administration in 1954, in these coming congressional elections? In congressional elections this year. Well, that's, you're asking me to guess about something there. But my guess is that they will. I think that the American people realize that Ike has got to have a Republican Congress. And he's got to have enough of a majority to really make things click. And they'll come along with him and we will have a Republican Congress this fall. Thank you very much, Congressman Dawson. Nice to have you here tonight. The opinions expressed on the Lone Gene Chronoscope were those of the speakers. The editorial board for this edition of the Lone Gene Chronoscope was Larry LeSere and Lewis Banks. Our distinguished guest was the Honorable William A. Dawson, United States representative from Utah. A Lone Gene watch makes the most distinguished gift. 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