Choice gleanings from 45-plus years of Unregistered Bull.

When Nikita Krushchev, big boss of Russia, laid down the law and laid off Malenkov awhile back, he lied about Russian stockmen by failing to tell the whole truth.

According to Nikita, agricultural production in Russia is a general flop. In the livestock department, he said cows weren't giving enough milk, steers weren't getting fat, and sows didn't have anywhere near enough pigs. All because, he said, bosses of state farms weren't tough enough and farmers were too hardheaded to take good care of stock.

He said Russia would have a lot more meat, for instance, if collective cattlemen hadn't taken up the idea of trying to see how long a steer would live on plain water and fresh air alone.

What Nikita didn't say was that the Russian system of government, not the Russian farmer, is primarily responsible for poor agricultural production there. When does a stockman fail to feed his stock? Only when the stock isn't really his; only when he can never hope to own any stock; and only when grain supplies are limited, as they are in Russia, because grain farmers have to produce under the same conditions as the stockmen.

We in America and the rest of the free world may find some pleasure, even relief, in hearing Nikita howl about agricultural failures in Russia. No news from the Communists is good news to us except when the news is bad. But while we're patting ourselves on the back over the contrast Krushchev drew between agricultural production in the U.S.S.R. and the U.S., it behooves us to remember the basic cause of Russia's trouble — and be careful lest we have the same trouble in this country.

Here in America, farmers and stockmen are busy trying to grow crops so abundant that oversupply, not lack, is their problem. That's because we're free men. True, ours is better farm and ranch land than that in Russia, but American farmers, under our form of government, would beat the Russians in their own country.

Nevertheless, we in America might have been closer to communism or socialism or something else under a different name but meaning the same thing, if we'd listened to some of the screwball politicians and bureaucrats who've preached to us during the past 20 years.

Who doesn’t remember how the cattle business was fouled up by Washington bureaucrats at one time or another in the past two decades? Who can't recall some of the weird suggestions of Wallace and Brannan when they were secretary of agriculture?

For that matter, who hasn't heard of cattlemen, as well as other businessmen, deliberately producing less simply to avoid income taxes in this country? And who in American agriculture hasn't yielded to, or at least been tempted by, government offers of "something for nothing" in the way of subsidies — forgetting that government patronage must be paid for out of the public pocket.

State assistance, state control, higher taxes, less private freedom, eventual state ownership — it's a vicious circle which, if allowed to go far enough, doesn't stop short of socialism, communism or call-it-what-you-will. And it always results in lower production, a lower standard of living. The British found that out and had to give tools of production back to private owners. But there are still plenty of Britishers willing to play ball with the Communists for a buck.

There are still a lot of Americans willing to turn their business over to the government in return for "security." There are a lot more Americans who have no business but who insist that the government or somebody owes them a living. Thank heaven they are in the minority so far. If they should gain the majority, hunger and misery, frustration and failure might stalk our land as in Russia. — (S.F. 02/24/00)