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An Allen Drury quote


In the final book of the famous series of political novels that began with ADVISE AND CONSENT, we get a (relatively) happy ending called THE PROMISE OF JOY, in which Drury's idealized hero, Orrin Knox, finally becomes President. His inaugural speech is recorded in some detail. This one paragraph -- which does not really arise out of anything else in the plot, jumps out at me.

"Agriculture will continue to receive the same close attention from my administration that it has received from others. The price gap between producer and consumer is still too low for the producer, too high for the consumer, too close to profiteering for the middleman. We will seek ways to close that gap."  

What on earth does that mean? As I say, it is from Drury's hero. We should not lightly write it off as meaningless political blather. 

The gap between producer and consumer? Presumably this refers to the gap between what the farmer gets selling wheat and what the consumers put out buying the bread, in between those middlemen.  But that amounts to the rather silly claim that, on the imagined time-line, farmers were complaining that the price gap was "too low." Not that the prices they could get were too low but that the price GAP was too low.  Why the heck would they make that complaint? There wasn't profiteering enough going on for them? 

Presumably what Knox meant, and what Drury meant to have him say, was that "The price gap between producer and consumer is still too large for both, so that the price is too low for the former and too high for the latter, a circumstance that looks to the public too much like profiteering by the middleman."

I could go on here for some time about the fact that the various sorts of middlemen have their uses [would the consumers prefer the unprocessed wheat?] -- but I will just say that even the financial middlemen have their uses, and responsible leadership might say from time to time that the appearance of "profiteering" -- gain without any addition of value -- is often merely an appearance, and one ought to be wary of administrations that take office promising to "close the gap." I am also reminded of the phrase "mind the gap" at London's underground stations, but I'm not sure that helps here.  

Knox is one of those mouthpiece-for-the-novelist characters and the statement suggests that Drury himself had incoherent views on farm prices and naturally attributes them to his character. Though the more generous interpretation is also possible: that Drury wanted his character to have such views, showing us that the new President's heart really isn't into agriculture policy.

On an unrelated point: the title of the book, "the promise of joy," is a quote from an Edwardian journalist, Harold Begby. I haven't been able to contextualize the quote, but it may have been made on the outbreak of war in 1914. 

"Let us wear on our sleeve the crepe of mourning for a civilization that held the promise of joy." 


 

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