Word: aaas
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...were faced with a vexing question before they could begin to cultivate their fields. Amishmen, unlike members of other Mennonite sects, do not sign contracts. An Amishman's word is as good as another's bond. Yet contracts were waiting for them to sign as part of AAA's crop-reduction program...
...motorized farm machinery, Amish husbandmen raise corn and tobacco which are best adapted for the efforts of man and horse. Last year the Pennsylvania Amishmen joined in the reduction of crops by voluntarily curtailing their tobacco acreage. They puzzled many a Washington official, played hob with many an AAA balance sheet, by refusing to accept any Government benefit money. Since then, however, as result of a referendum held in Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Ohio, tobacco-growers who do not sign contracts are liable to a 33⅔% tax on the sale price of their crop. Other Mennonite farmers have therefore signed...
...Southern landlords, correctly informed by their lawyers that the cotton reduction contract has no legal teeth and does not bind them to maintain the normal number of tenants or to pass their benefit shares along impartially, found means of withholding the reduction fee, ousting tenants from the land. AAA now admits that whereas the pre-New Deal cotton income went 40% to landlords, 60% to tenants, the reverse ratio may now hold true. From a class and country where letter-writing comes hard, some 7,000 share croppers had by last week scrawled out despairing protests to AAAdministrator Chester Davis...
What to Do? Just before the Rodgers trial the AAA dispatched red-headed Mary Connor Myers, a Boston lawyer who helped the Department of Justice jail Al Capone, to Arkansas to see what all the trouble was about. Last week she reported to Washington. It was announced that the written part of her report was confidential, and the oral part was for the ears of Chester Davis alone. The United Press said: "Mrs. Myers, it was understood, uncovered contract violations which caused cruel hardships to part of the farm population. She found share croppers straggling along the highways, homeless...
...Myers report, soon to be amplified by an AAA share cropping investigation in every Southern county, was withheld, explained Administrator Davis, "because it may lead to legal action...