Senator George McGovern USDA Millennium Lecture and Dedication Release No. 0386.99 Remarks As Prepared for Delivery by Senator George McGovern USDA Millennium Lecture and Dedication of the Henry A. Wallace Room September 29, 1999 "Secretary Dan Glickman, my friend with whom I served in the Congress, former Senator John Culver, another treasured friend and former colleague in the Senate, members of the Wallace family--- I am honored and delighted to be with you for the dedication of the Henry A. Wallace Room and to participate in the USDA Millennium Lecture Series. "Henry A. Wallace was a remarkable thinker and 'doer', a Renaissance man whose broad talents and significant accomplishments covered the realms of art, science, economics, politics, and the human spirit. "With all due respect and great admiration for today's agricultural leaders, I must say that you just don't see people like Henry A. Wallace in public service nowadays. A distinguished historian of the Department of Agriculture, my friend Wayne Rasmussen has said that Wallace has been the only true genius in the history of USDA. He said that before Dan Glickman became the Secretary of Agriculture. "I must tell you with mixed feelings that Mr. Wallace, his father and his grandfather were all good Iowa Republicans. But then I confess that was true with the McGovern clan who also lived in Iowa before migrating to South Dakota. One wayward McGovern grandson became a Democrat worse than that a McGovernite. "In 1896 when the Republicans captured the White House under McKinley and his Vice President Theodore Roosevelt, they offered Iowa Republicans this choice of a cabinet position. The leaders went to Uncle Henry ----- Wallace's grandfather for advice and he promptly said 'Ask for the Secretary of Agriculture.' When they asked him if he would accept the job, Uncle Henry said 'No' but offer it to Tama 'Jim' Wilson. Wilson served for the next 16 years; the longest of any Cabinet Secretary in American history. "Henry Wallace's father then served as Secretary of Agriculture under Harding and Coolidge. His father was also a professor at Iowa State and one of his graduate students was George Washington Carver. Carver was to take young Henry with him on his nature walks and he noted that even as a boy Wallace had reverence for plants ---- a reverence that he took to his grave. "Former Iowa Senator John Culver ---- my dear friend and former Senate colleague has written what promises to be the definitive biography of Henry A. Wallace. The book will be out early next year. In a recent speech Senator Culver tells of an incident in New York in 1933 when Wallace, Roosevelt's newly named Secretary of Agriculture was being questioned by a critical audience, 'Mr. Wallace,' said one man 'if you had to pick the one quality most important to have in plant breeding, what would it be?' The man settled back to enjoy a long scholarly reply but Wallace's response was brief and startling. Without a moment's hesitation he said: 'Sympathy for the plant.' 'For Wallace,' concluded Senator Culver, 'the failure to understand the nature of plants and animals was symptomatic of modern man's inability to understand life itself.' "Ironically, Wallace's reverence for life led him into an independent party presidential effort in 1948 that alienated the major political parties for the next decade. But in 1961, John Kennedy invited him to his inaugural. Wallace loved it. "Then in 1962 Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman taking his lead from JFK invited Wallace to give a major address at the Centennial observance of the Department. When Wallace drove up to the Department he found his way blocked in all directions by car loads of folks coming to hear him. The Departmental Auditorium at 12th and Constitution was jammed to overflowing. Many of the older USDA employees who had served under Wallace were in the audience. They loved and admired him ---- he loved their warm response. "Listen to his concluding lines of May 15, 1962: 'When we learn how to develop our human relations as we have developed our agricultural productive capacity, when we learn how to retain the best traditions of our farms in an increasingly urbanized society, when we learn anew how to fire ourselves and our youth with a sense of moral responsibility and of purpose, then we well invent even newer techniques and build the new institutions needed in a hungry world threatened with self-destruction. Then, as Liberty Hyde Bailey might say if he were here today, we can develop a race of men that will provide the moral leadership and be "the stay and strength" of all mankind.' "Let me take a few minutes to review some of the contributions that Wallace made to society even before he was Secretary of Agriculture. As a schoolboy, he conducted a well designed experiment that demonstrated to himself and others that the robustness and yield of corn had nothing to do with how attractive the corn kernels or ears are. This early work foresaw one of the scientific achievements for which he is best known the development of the first commercially viable strain of hybrid corn. Less well known is the fact that. He introduced econometrics (a form of statistical analysis) to agriculture. He first discovered, through the application of statistical techniques to agricultural economics, the existence of the hog cycle. While this 7-year cyclical relationship between corn and hog prices is now taught in introductory agricultural science courses as a classic example of agricultural system dynamics, it was a revolutionary discovery at the time. He was a prolific and articulate writer for the Wallace family's publication, Wallace's Farmer. It was in that journal that Wallace wrote about how farmers and government might work together to reduce, or even prevent the devastating effects on American farm families of agricultural 'boom and bust' cycles. "Because Wallace was so finely attuned to the cycles that flow through farming and economic systems over time, I doubt he would be surprised at the similarities in the conditions that exist now, and those that existed 70 years ago, just prior to his tenure as Secretary. "In the mid to late 1920's, American farmers were primed to produce. They had geared up a magnificent agricultural machine in response to the demand generated by World War I. Farmers were similarly primed to produce in the mid 1990's. Global demand for American agricultural products was high and projected to follow a strong growth trend. Farmers in the post WWI period saw the bottom fall out of their markets as foreign countries cinched their belts in war-indebted attempts to economize. Similarly, the growth projected for agricultural markets in the 1990's has been stunted by the Asian financial crisis. To top off these difficulties, the mid 1920's were and the late 1990's have been characterized by bumper crops - a blessing turned into a curse. In neither of these two periods were many farmers or are many farmers earning enough from the sale of their crops or animals to cover production costs. Financial stress, then as now, accelerated the trend towards fewer and fewer farmers -- a trend that technological advances had allowed throughout the century as more food could be produced with fewer inputs. And in Wallace's time, as now, technological 'Luddites' questioned the role of and need for additional agricultural technology gains. "When Wallace became Secretary of Agriculture in 1933, he put his keen mind to work on crafting the most innovative package of government farm programs ever; a significant part of the FDR Administration's New Deal. Wallace's approach was to provide incentives for farmers to cut back on production while markets were glutted and prices were low. His programs also gave the Federal government the new role of making sure that farm livelihoods would be maintained through the unusually deep trough of the cycle in which the American farm economy found itself at the height of the Great Depression. "His ingenious approach worked. It is a prime reason that Henry A. Wallace is acknowledged as among the most important agricultural leaders of this century. His policy success is, in large part, why we are gathered here today to dedicate a room to his memory in a building that houses this Administration's principal agricultural policy decision makers. "NOW, imagine something with me, if you will. What if Henry A. Wallace could be here with us today. What might he suggest to help us make as positive an impact on American agriculture and American farmers as he did when he was Secretary? I've imagined five messages I think he might want to relay to us. "1. Do not blame science. Nothing can express his feelings on this better than the following quote: 'I have no patience with those who claim that the present day surplus of farm products means that we should stop our efforts at improved agricultural efficiency. What we need is not less science in farming, but more science in economics. Science has no doubt made the surplus possible, but science is not responsible for our failure to distribute the fruits of labor equitably.' "My interpretation of this quote is that our policy needs to anticipate, embrace, and accommodate the results of productivity increases; to capitalize on the wonderful fruits of science -- our ability to feed the hungry of the world and relieve the burdens associated with labor intensive agriculture -- while simultaneously realizing, and doing something about the fact that efficiency gains lead to a situation where fewer farmers are needed for food production. Let me assert my own long time conviction. It is never right to bemoan farmer surpluses so long as there are hungry Americans and hungry fellow humans around the world. "If we have the wit and the will to use our agricultural abundance to end human hunger, that will add to the prosperity of our farmers and it will bless our souls. Every one of the world's major religions commands us to feed the hungry ---- that we must do if we would glorify God and his creatures. "The second piece of advice I should imagine Wallace offering is to: "2. Seek policy solutions that target the plight of farmers under stress. It takes wisdom to craft policies that concentrate their effects precisely to the group that most needs government support. As Secretary of Agriculture, Wallace developed emergency measures for the specific purpose of keeping endangered farmers in business long enough to weather the deep trough of one business cycle. The health and well being of America's family farm households were foremost in his mind. And he devised policies that targeted the truly needy, despite the fact that meant a substantial shift in the distribution of government support among different groups. "The third message from Henry I imagine is... "3. Be flexible; seek adaptations; embrace change. Wallace did not see 'his' Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 as permanent legislation. (He would probably be appalled that it remained so little changed for so many years prior to 1996.) But he would also be appalled that the basic farm law dating back to 1938 was scrapped in 1996 with no carefully thought out workable alternative to take its place. The farm crisis today makes me long for the Ever Normal Granary Plan. But despite the similarities in basic supply and demand imbalances that exist today and existed in his time, I doubt very seriously that if he was acting as Secretary today, he would implement the same policy prescriptions he made in the 1930's. I expect that, instead, he would factor in some of the differences between his time and ours including a global rather than domestically-oriented U.S. agriculture and new environmental and food safety concerns. Speaking of the environment, let's turn to what I imagine as a fourth dictum from Henry A. Wallace. "4. Integrate natural resource conservation with agricultural adjustment. Wallace was a consummate agricultural resource conservationist. From an early age he was aware of the potential for agricultural production, especially when poorly practiced, to ravage the environment. But he did not use what he clearly recognized as a potential and sometimes realized negative relationship between agriculture and the environment as an excuse to rail against either farming or environmentalism. Instead, he focused on what he also saw as the potential for positive relationships, between farming, the natural landscape, and farm and resource conservation policy. "Henry A. Wallace was the progenitor of the idea that temporarily idling agricultural land could reduce soil erosion and repair the land at the same time that it reduced overproduction. Today's 36 million acre Conservation Reserve Program was based on the Soil Bank idea initiated during Wallace's tenure. Today he might ask us to look at other positive, environmental attributes of agriculture and agricultural policy as the basis for government actions taken to undergird modern agricultural markets. "Wallace's vigilance in considering the environmental implications of agricultural production and policy earned him a venerated role in the 'sustainable agriculture movement.' Were he with us right now, I wonder if he would feel comfortable with the sustainability of agriculture's current path - particularly in the global context. Perhaps any concerns in that regard might be dealt with in the context of my last imagined piece of advice based on Henry A. Wallace's writings, actions, and perspectives. "5. Pursue technological advance for the public good. Wallace said (and this is a quote), that... '...attacks upon science stem from many sources. It is necessary for science to defend itself, first against such attacks, and second, against the consequences of its own success. Science has magnificently enabled mankind to conquer its first great problem - that of producing enough to go around; but..science, having created abundance, has now to help men live with abundance to help mankind conquer social problems.' "In taking this tack, Wallace is advocating a systematic assessment of how the public sector can best direct its research in order to produce public goods. And I can think of no lack of social problems surrounding agriculture that the private sector has no incentive to address and thus fall in the purview of government. "What are those problems and challenges? Technology for improved agri- environmental protection; techniques for assuring an even better food safety record than we already have at the turn of the century; research on policy approaches that foster an equitable distribution of our abundant food supply across America and the globe; ...Just to name a few. "At the turn of the millennium, we still have much to learn from Henry A. Wallace - a man born before the turn of the last century, but prescient about the next. "I hope the Henry A. Wallace room that we dedicate today will long be the site of discussion, debate, educational fora, and policy decision making that reflect the insight, astuteness, courage, innovation, and foresight of its remarkable namesake far into the next millennium. "In 1965, at 75 years of age, Wallace developed Lou Gehrig's disease --- - a nerve disorder that has no cure. An experimenter to the end, he kept a careful record of his symptoms and reactions. "A visitor who came to see him at his room in NIH noted that the flowers in his room were from President Lyndon Johnson. Wallace could no longer speak but he handed a note to his friend which read 'I hope they think about decentralization as the hope of the future. Big cites will become cesspools.' "Thomas Jefferson would have loved that as Senator Culver has observed: 'That was his message. Think big, plant small, work hard, seek the truth, glorify God, and have sympathy for the plant.' "May I add a final personal note 1944 was the first presidential year that I was old enough to vote. But I was a B24 bomber pilot flying from a base in Italy and no one told us about absentee ballots. 1948 was the first presidential election year in which my wife Eleanor and I were able to vote. That was the year Henry Wallace ran for President on the Progressive ticket. Eleanor and I supported Mr. Wallace and we served as delegates to his convention in Philadelphia. Wallace believed that the Cold War and the global arms race between Russians and Americans were over done. He believed that fundamental economic and political problems could not be resolved by military means. "Twenty four years later I won the Democratic presidential nomination on a similar platform ---- ending U.S. involvement in Vietnam and bringing the Cold War and the arms race under control. "A remarkable band of volunteers engineered that capture of the Democratic Presidential nomination. One of them was Eleanor McGovern who is here today. Will she stand. Another was the Texas Coordinator of the McGovern campaign ---- a young Yale law school graduate, Bill Clinton. "Mr. Wallace and I did not win those two elections. But I'm glad that I stood with Wallace in 1948 and with McGovern in 1972! God Bless each one of you who works in this great National treasure ---- the U.S. Department of Agriculture. #