PROFILE Harold F. Breimyer on ...

ORIS V. WELLS

n an era when the gray flannel suit was both badge and prerequisite for distinction, Oris Vernon Wells, indifferent to social convention and impatient with glad-handing, gained a distinctively high recognition by outknowledging everyone. He began his career as one of the second wave of bright minds of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics (BAE), became a principal architect of the farm pro­ grams that are now well into their second half-century, and finally served as second-ranking official of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). If agricultural economics has a professional ladder that begins on a farm or ranch and ends at a position of high authority, Oris Wells climbed it. Born in Mississippi in 1903 but reared on a New Mexico ranch, he joined the BAE in

Harold F. Breimyer is Professor and Extension Economist Emeritus, University of Missouri-Columbia.

38 • CHOICES Second Quarter 1992 1929 when that dynamic agency was at the height of its powers Wells would thereby be prepared to make a dramatic presenta­ and reputation. Moving to the Agricultural Adjustment Adminis­ tion that would be repeated often. The Secretary of Agriculture or tration (AAA) during the New Deal years, he climbed fast to influ­ a Congressional Committee, facing puzzling questions about, say, ential policy-making status. He returned to the BAE when the a feed grains policy, would summon Wells to a quickly called agency was assigned planning duties for the Department. After meeting. Just as he had done at New Mexico, Wells would stay up World War II the BAE came under fire for its planning, where­ half (or more) of the night, going over everything his office had upon its administrator, Howard Tolley, escaped to the shelter of compiled about feed grains. At the next day's session, when asked the FAO in Rome. Wells took his place, under mandate from just about anything about corn or barley, Wells would either recite USDA Secretary Clinton Anderson to keep the agency under light data from his commodious memory or get the appropriate card wraps and out of trouble. from Burnett. Or he would report the latest demand analysis data Later, Secretary Benson, with Assistant Secretary Earl Coke as of Geoff Shepherd at Iowa State. his leg man, abolished the BAE. Various of its more traditional He became simply invaluable, so influential as to be vulnerable functions were put in a new Agricultural Marketing Service to each change of administration. Whenever new USDA leader­ (AMS) that Wells was to head. One administration-change later, ship came on the scene, he would be reported as in jeopardy. He Secretary Freeman, urged on by his chief economist Willard probably was, until the novice officials needed to know the latest Cochrane, reorganized the AMS, pulling many of the constituent scoop about corn, cotton, or peanuts. Once more Wells would stay parts of the former BAE back together in the new Economic up half the night, wow them, and again become indispensable. Research Service. In the kind of finesse that is a mark of Washing­ When Eisenhower was elected President, the odds that the ton officialdom, Oris Wells moved, not too reluctantly, to the FAO Wells tenure would end turned higher. The USDA buzzed with in Rome. rumors that the new Secretary Ezra Taft Benson, the devout Mor­ Characteristically, Wells continued his career ascent in the mon who knew Wells had worked for the heretical New Deal, FAO, becoming Deputy Director General within two years. He would banish Wells. Wells' salvation this time had another remained in that position until retiring in 1971. He returned to source. Price support law required periodic statistical adjustment Alexandria, Virginia, and died in 1986. of parity prices. About that time new data lowering the parity Other vitae are that Wells, after graduating from New Mexico price for cotton were made known. Wells was summoned to the State in 1928, took graduate work at Minnesota and Harvard. He Hill by the already-redoubtable Jamie Whitten. Whitten gave eventually received two honorary doctor's degrees. He was presi­ Wells the most merciless grilling of Wells's career. "How can you dent of the (then-named) American Farm Economic Association undermine the income of every cotton farmer in the whole United in 1949 and was elected a Fellow (of the American Agricultural States by your silly pencil pushing?" came the abusive rebuke Economics Association) in 1961. from Whitten. But bare-bones data tell little about the character and contribu­ The event was engraved on my memory, so much so that when r tion of O. V. Wells. My association with him began in 1936, when had lunch with Oris Wells not long before his death I reminded I joined his Production Planning Section of the AAA. It continued him of the Whitten inquisition. "Oh," Wells laughed in reply, intermittently until his death. I can report from both personal "that was all staged. It had been reported that Benson was about observation and lore. First, a bit of lore. While still a student at to fire me, and Whitten put on such a show that Benson had to New Mexico State, young Wells was assigned to a farm-and-ranch come to my defense." project that emanated from the BAE in Washington. Mordecai The Wells USDA tenure ended following the arrival of Freeman Ezekiel, already a BAE luminary, rode the rails and maybe a and Cochrane. So Wells, too, went to the FAO, climbing the lad­ wagon to reach Las Cruces, where he learned that Wells would der there to the rung next to the top. work up appropriate data. "I am glad to see all these raw data," Wells reportedly repeated in Rome the singular performance Ezekiel commented. "They have to be totaled and averages run for internationally that had been his imprint during his U.S. career. several categories, and I'll be in early tomorrow to work with This profile, however, is essentially confined to the latter. you." Came the morning, and Ezekiel accosted Wells, "Let's go at Oris Well was tall, a bit awkward, indifferent to matters sartori­ the numbers." With feigned nonchalance Oris replied, "Here they al. A small impediment of speech was mastered so well that at the are." He had run the calculators nonstop the night long; by day­ height of his U.S. career he was sought for any farm-policy forum, break the job was done. often to be joined there by the other two members of an awesome It's not surprising that Ezekiel tagged Wells immediately as some­ threesome, John D. Black and Theodore W. Schultz. one who could contribute to the BAE, as indeed Wells was to do. In my judgment, next after Mordecai Ezekiel and Chester Davis, A sequel with some irony is that a decade later Wells would Oris Wells contributed more than any other one person to framing rival Ezekiel as the most influential policy adviser to Secretary the basic structure of farm commodity programs. Landmark legis­ Wallace; and yet a few years after that he would outrank Ezekiel lation was the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938. It was largely in the USDA hierarchy, as Ezekiel slipped into the shadows and the handiwork of Wells and Carl Farrington of the AANs Western an FAO spot. Division. It provided for mandatory nonrecourse loans, referenda on marketing quotas, parity payments, crop insurance, and other The Wells Memory Store features that in whole or in part, and sometimes relabeled, are retained in laws of today. Oris Wells was first and most of all a data hound. In our AAA That is the story of Oris Wells, a giant among agricultural unit during the 1930s we pulled together just about all the avail­ economists. I add a couple of personal notes. Wells was proud of able statistical information on not only agriculture and farm pro­ his ability to "do numbers" in his head. He was indeed quick in grams but the U.S. economy. Wells ordered special tabular forms mental arithmetic, and enjoyed a bit of innocent display. And, printed, onto which Bertha Burnett and Helen Hadley recorded finally, I dedicate my memoir, Over-fulfilled Expectations: A Life supply, disappearance, and price data for every important com­ and an Era in Rural America, published in 1991, to four persons modity, as well as national economic indexes. My job was to col­ of whom Oris Wells is one. "He taught without meaning to," I lect every reputable price analysis bulletin published by the USDA write. He taught primarily by example; I am grateful for havin....B. or any state college. Where one was lacking, I tried to fill the gap. had the opportunity to learn. [!I

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