Excerpts of the President's News Conference

I don't know as I can make any particular comment about the rejection of the Conference agricultural bill. I don't know enough about the details of these bills to discuss the details with any intelligence. I have been going more particularly on my confidence in people that have made recommendations and not on my particular knowledge of the recommendations that have been made. Now here we have the heads of five great farm organizations and three or four experts from our agricultural institutions that are supposed to know something about farm economics. They made some recommendations about legislation. I don't think there would be anything in those recommendations that are likely to be harmful to the farmer. Now, you don't have to study the farm question but a very short time to find out that every time there is any effort made to help the farmer the people that live off the farmer or off the distribution of his products almost always come in and resist anything being done. I don't know what the reason for that is. They seem to think that if the farmer is going to be helped that means they are going to be injured. I don't agree with that view. The better off the farmer is the better off those will be that deal with him. But there does seem to be a very determined opposition on the part of those who act as distributors, not all of them, but quite a number of them, to any assistance being rendered the farmer. And they don't come in themselves and say, "I am dealing in farm produce." They reach over and get the farmer to come in and oppose it himself. Now that is a reaction that always occurs, so that we are not going to get any farm legislation without opposition, and the opposition will apparently come from the farmer when of course those with experience know very well that it originates with others. Then there are those who are determined that nothing shall be done for the farmer unless they do it. I have a good deal of sympathy with them and wish they would do more than they do. I am very glad to hand over to them the work of doing something for the farmer if they will do it, but they haven't been able to accomplish very much, and therefore I was hopeful that this farm conference recommendation would receive favorable action from the Congress. I am not entirely certain that it will not result that way now.