VIII.

One of the difficult problems which face the new administration is that of the slow, irregular decline of farm prices.  This decline, which has been going on for almost 2 years, has occurred at a time when most nonfarm prices and farm costs of production are extraordinarily high.

Present agricultural legislation provides for the mandatory support of the prices of basic farm commodities at 90 percent of parity.  The Secretary of Agriculture and his associates will, of course, execute the present act faithfully and thereby seek to mitigate the consequences of the downturn in farm income.

This price-support legislation will expire at the end of 1954.

So we should begin now to consider what farm legislation we should develop for 1955 and beyond.  Our aim should be economic stability and full parity of income for American farmers.  But we must seek this goal in ways that minimize governmental interference in the farmers’ affairs, that permit desirable shifts in production, and that encourage farmers themselves to use initiative in meeting changing economic conditions.

A continuing study reveals nothing more emphatically than the complicated nature of this subject.  Among other things, it shows that the prosperity of our agriculture depends directly upon the prosperity of the whole country—­upon the purchasing power of American consumers.  It depends also upon the opportunity to ship abroad large surpluses of particular commodities, and therefore upon sound economic relationships between the United States and many foreign countries.  It involves research and scientific investigation, conducted on an extensive scale.  It involves special credit mechanisms and marketing, rural electrification, soil conservation, and other programs.

The whole complex of agricultural programs and policies will be studied by a Special Agricultural Advisory Commission, as I know it will by appropriate committees of the Congress.  A nonpartisan group of respected authorities in the field of agriculture has already been appointed as an interim advisory group.

The immediate changes needed in agricultural programs are largely budgetary and administrative in nature.  New policies and new programs must await the completion of the far-reaching studies which have already been launched.

IX.

The determination of labor policy must be governed not by the vagaries of political expediency but by the firmest principles and convictions.  Slanted partisan appeals to American workers, spoken as if they were a group apart, necessitating a special language and treatment, are an affront to the fullness of their dignity as American citizens.

The truth in matters of labor policy has become obscured in controversy.  The very meaning of economic freedom as it affects labor has become confused.  This misunderstanding has provided a climate of opinion favoring the growth of governmental paternalism in labor relations.  This tendency, if left uncorrected, could end only by producing a bureaucratic despotism.  Economic freedom is, in fact, the requisite of greater prosperity for every American who earns his own living.