Washington By TOM LITTLEWOOD

Farmer, worker, government — can foreign trade make them all happy?

ECONOMIC tension between farmer and factory worker is as old as the industrial revolution and as American as apple pie and baseball. Rural influence in the national government has been shrinking for many years. This trend became irreversible when the Supreme Court decreed that representative districts must consist of equal numbers of people. Enmity between farm and city runs deep in this presidential election year because of their differing interests in food prices and international commerce.

Soybean producers in central Illinois may distrust the "Commies" as much as ever. But they realize that the demand for the things they grow, and therefore prices, are boosted by foreign sales. Their competitive efficiency and ability to produce in abundance gives farmers a considerable economic stake in friendly relations and trade with the Soviet Union.

Conversely, much of organized industrial labor suffers under "free" trade, due in part to the higher standard-of-living of American workers. Unless the government redresses the balance, imported products with lower labor costs can compete favorably in the U. S. markets. Determining just such a mutually beneficial balance among the trading nations is what the negotiations now underway in Geneva, Switzerland, are all about.

Producers and consumers of food are highly agitated during the pre-election season for contradictory reasons. While retail food prices were rising — at a much steeper climb than farm prices — the interests of the urban worker were effectively coupled with those of "the consumer." In fact, as Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz loses no opportunity to point out, distribution and processing costs took a bigger cut out of the middle, including wages negotiated by unionized grocery workers and bakery truck drivers. Nevertheless, consumers were made aware that every ton of grain peddled to the Russians contributed to higher prices at the checkout counter. Maritime workers took the extreme step on one occasion of refusing to handle Soviet shipments. Future sales were spread over a longer period. These days anytime an issue can be construed as involving consumer interests the other side is likely to lose.

Playing to their different constituencies, neither Butz nor the leaders of the AFL-CIO have endeavored to promote the slightest cooperative understanding. Steelworkers Union President I. W. Abel attacked the secretary's proposal that the United States accept more industrial imports in exchange for more agricultural exports. "American industrial jobs should never be used as a tradeoff for more soybean exports," Abel declared. Instead of offering concessions, the steel industry demands restrictive quotas on imports from foreign government-owned or subsidized steel companies.

Equally angry farmers charged that agricultural policy was being dictated by former Harvard professor Henry Kissinger (U.S. secretary of state) and former plumber George Meany (AFL- CIO president). When another Harvard professor, John Dunlop, quit as U.S. secretary of labor, the Eastern Press moaned and the Farm Belt cheered. Organized protests from soybean growers inspired the administration to arrange more import credits for non-Communist buyers. When the 1974 Trade Act was passed, the Soviets were denied credits as punishment for their refusal to allow free emigration of Russian Jews to Israel, a provision that retarded East-West nonagricultural trade particularly. Later, when the Soviets intervened in the Angolan civil war, some Democratic senators from urban states suggested that the U.S. retaliate by shutting off the supply of food to Russia.

Something of a political wonder in the midst of all this is how Sen. Hubert Humphrey (D., Minn.), that venerable viceroy of verbosity, lives on as the hero of factory worker and farmer alike. At a rally of Abel's Steelworkers, the union members raise the roof for Humphrey because of his zealous advocacy of bread and butter issues — jobs and prosperity.

At the same time he can and does make the case for farm prices at 100 per cent of parity. Parity is a concept that relates prices to the purchasing power of farmers based on "pre-inflated" dollars. Humphrey denounced Butz for putting up with the wheat export embargo and for opposing a bill (vetoed by President Ford) that would have raised milk price supports to 85 per cent of parity. Supports at 85 per cent, said Humphrey, are "like saying to a worker, you are going to get 85 per cent of the minimum wage, or like telling your physician, doctor, we will give you 85 per cent of your fee."

Helped by exports, farm income is up, but not as much as the costs of what farmers buy. There is a new militancy sweeping the plains, as demonstrated by this year's upheaval in the American Farm Bureau Federation. More conservative leaders identified with Illinois and the Corn Belt were dethroned by Western and Southern factions more receptive to government action of the type that Humphrey has been espousing for many years. In the final analysis, Humphrey's Democratic party philosophy gambles that city workers are more concerned about secure jobs and pay raises than they are with inflation.

May 1976 / Illinois Issues / 31