On April 13, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, Gen. George A. Lincoln, and John B. Connally talked on the telephone from 4:40 pm to 4:47 pm. The White House Telephone taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 042-033 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
Yeah.
General Lincoln, Mr. President.
Hello, Mr. President.
Abe, I'm sitting here talking to John Connolly about that Texas situation.
He's just back.
I wondered if he could talk to you a bit and you fill him in what you're doing.
He can sort of give you a feeling about what we could do.
Okay, sir.
Particularly with regard to an item of paying the freight on the rail.
on a hay, but here we go.
General?
Yes to you.
How are you?
I'm very well.
As a matter of fact, I was just on the phone with Cliff Hardin on this problem, and he was outlining to me how he's proceeding.
All right.
I don't know a thing about it.
I don't pose as an expert.
I merely want to give you this much information.
Number one, it is damn bad.
That much I know over a very, very wide range of Texas.
It is just as bad as they say it is.
Secondly, don't just let, don't let Cliff go with just a grain program.
Because all you do is run up the price of grain.
Well, now, he can go with a grain program from his parity price.
They call it loan price.
All right, but go with some hay.
Yes, that's what we were starting to talk about, hay.
Now, the most effective thing, at least now, this is what the farmers said.
I'm just telling you what they look at.
And during the Truman days, they had a drought in a certain part of Texas, and what the administration did then was to pay the freight.
The farmers bought the hay.
The president said he was in Congress, and he remembers it.
And it was a very popular program where the farmers bought the hay, but the government transported it for them for free.
So if they were paying $42 for alfalfa a ton or $48 in Arizona, well, that's all it cost them.
It didn't cost them $90 a ton.
And what they're trying to do is save their cow herds.
There's 8,000 to 10,000 head a week now in the San Antonio market.
8,000 to 9,000.
They think that'll jump in another, if it doesn't rain in the next 10 days, they think that'll jump to 10,000 to 12,000 a week.
And the normal's about 4,000.
Yes, I've already checked that they've doubled there.
I got that figure just now.
And, of course, I'm right in the middle of it.
I've got two ranches, 125 miles apart.
Hell, I've been selling mother cows for six weeks.
I saw this damn thing coming, or thought I did.
How are you off for hay, by the way, because we're yourself?
Am I off for hay?
Yeah.
I have no hay.
I put up 20,000 bales, and I bought hay.
I bought 2,000 bales of hay to get me past the last 30 days, and fortunately, I've got 400 acres that I'm irrigating around the clock now trying to keep my cow herd together, but most people don't have that.
And hell, there's no grass there.
I have the Department of Agriculture making a survey across most of the United States to find out where hay is right now.
That's good.
So that's been underway for a couple of days.
You'll have to ship it in, General.
There's no hay in Texas.
Yes, and I have ascertained that there apparently is no hay in Texas.
That's right.
And we have a problem.
According to the Department of Agriculture, that every hay deal that they ever were involved in, they say they got in a mess.
That there were allegations that things were not quite right.
Allegations, I suppose, that the first hay went to the King Ranch.
allegations that people were using government hay when they had feed of their own.
And so we face up to those dangers.
Now, I'll say frankly that what I was talking to Cliff Harden about on the hay business was that for the time, as a first cut,
to try and see if we couldn't get private enterprise operating with the Department of Agriculture telling these people where the hay was
and have the ranchers or the dealers make the deals themselves to get the hay.
Right.
To keep the government out of the middle of that.
Right.
And on price, where I sympathize with this, I pointed out to him that the price of hay here in the east, and I have to know something about this because I have a daughter teaching writing at the Rock Creek Stables,
The price of hay in Middleburg is $55 to $65 a ton right now.
That's what people pay out there in Virginia for their horses and cattle.
So one comes down to have to think a little bit about whether, at least at the beginning of a drought,
one starts to pay transportation.
Now, a month from now or two months from now, one might be thinking about it.
Well, don't wait too damn long to where everybody else gets the credit for it.
I just have a few observations to make.
Secondly, don't be too niggardly.
Remember that the average person, and this is what I heard at the corner cafe down there,
They all sit around, and they don't have a damn thing to do.
They can't work their field, so they're all in town talking.
And they just say, by God, if there's a famine over in India, they goddamn sure get the food over there, and they don't mind giving it away.
They'll haul the wheat to Russia, to the Communists, or they'll give them food or anything else they want to eat.
But when it comes to us, we've got to go through all the goddamn rigmaroles and this and that, and we can't ever get any help.
I mean, this is an unfair thing, but nevertheless, that's their attitude.
I'm answering a lot of letters from California in the same vein right now.
So all I'm saying is if you're going to do something,
Hell, don't be niggardly about it.
Go on and do it, even if it costs you a little bit more money, because you're going to get credit, and only to the extent that you do it voluntarily.
Don't wait so long as where they think they made you do it.
Yes, I follow you.
Let me make a comment, by the way, on other things.
We've declared agricultural emergency loan areas for, what, 62 counties in Texas, and the same for emergency feed.
and have opened up grazing land, are going to open up grazing land down there, but it's going to be necessary.
I find to get some more money for the Department of Agriculture to deal with these loans.
Yeah, and you don't have enough grazing land in Texas to make any difference.
No.
This is a gesture to use everything that's available.
Well, I think that's fine.
Nothing wrong with it.
But I just followed that up as quick as I could, and I don't want to be running your business.
And that's all I know.
Yes.
Well, thank you very much.
Okay, General.
Thank you.