Choice gleanings from 45-plus years of Unregistered Bull.

"Now that President Eisenhower is trying to sell Congress on a new farm program," said John, "he's liable to get an idea of how a man feels trying to sell a string of thin cows on a dropping market in a bad drouth. No matter how he shapes the deal up, it will look bad to a lot of people and won't look entirely good to anybody.

"If I had a criticism to make on his farm policy up to date, it would be that he might have sounded a little too self-confident while running for office. He and his administration are already showing signs of backing up on some of their pre-election statements.

"However, I guess they didn't know as much as they do now. Anyway, it's a cinch there's no use running for office if you go around telling people what a hard time they're gonna have when you get in.

"The Democrats made a mess of their agricultural programs, the way I see it. A lot of our grief today is the result of their vote-getting but economy-wrecking policies. Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's all right to pay nearly half a million bucks a day just for storage on farm commodities while they rot and otherwise decrease in value. But from what I hear from the poultry and dairy boys, not to mention several other kinds of farmers, our previous support programs haven't worked out so well in the long run.

"There's some way to figure out this agricultural situation so everybody will benefit, but I'm derned if I claim to know what it is. It's easy to talk about, but hard to do anything about. In fact, if there'd been half as much downright hard thinking about it as there has been loud talking during the past 20 years, we might be a lot better off right now.

"It seems this country can produce more than it can eat or wear. High production is supposed to denote prosperity and a high standard of living. Yet, under the buy-it-store-it type of farm program, we might go broke and starve to death paying for more food than we could consume. Some people urge farmers to concentrate on greater efficiency of production. Efficiency denotes greater production at less cost. If production is artificially held down, we holler about loss of private initiative. If production increases too fast, we go broke because the market drops, or we go broke paying taxes so the government can buy the excess production.

"Now, let's see somebody come up with a fool-proof answer to that one.

"Any kind of economics is pretty hard to savvy, and I think agricultural economics is hardest of all. When you mix agricultural economics up with politics, you've got something that would make a Chinese puzzle designer go plumb crazy.

"However, maybe we'll survive it whether we understand it or not. I see in the Wall Street Journal where livestock sold higher Monday in Chicago while money was cheaper in New York. Since most of us have more livestock than money nowadays, we may be in better shape than we thought. I hope my banker feels the same way.

"Which reminds me of a local cowman who met his banker face-to-face the other day.

"'Well,' said the banker, 'I see you're still around.'

"'Yeah,' said the cowman, 'I haven't been able to get a standing shot at myself yet.'" — (S.F. 01/14/54)