Close is one of the leaders of the movement, which has no officers, no membership lists and no dues, but appears to be united in its discontent. “We won't buy, we won't sell and we won't produce until we can make a decent living from farming!” Steve Close, a farmer from Springfield, Colo., shouted from the amphitheater stage here. The demonstrators today were members of an organization calling itself the American Agriculture Movement, the group promoting the strike campaign. įew farm‐state senators and representatives were optimistic that Congress would act on the farmers’ demands, and Administration and Capitol Hill observers predicted neither food shortages nor price increases as a result of the protest. The demonstrations, which are to culminate in a nationwide farmers’ strike beginning Wednesday, were expected by Government officials to have more political than economic effect, if they have any effect at all. Similar demonstrations and tractor motorcades were held in more than 30 state capitals, the largest of them in Atlanta, the capital of President Carter's home state. The drivers then walked to an amphitheater near the Washington Monument, where several hundred of them braved bitter cold and a piercing wind, cheering as they heard other farmers on the stage venting their anger against national farm leaders and farm policy. The tractors, their giant wheels as high as automobiles and their cabs half as high as streetlight poles, were then parked in many‐colored rows along those same streets in blocks near the Capitol. 10-Two columns of tractors and trucks rolled into the nation's capital from Maryland and Virginia today to demonstrate their drivers’ anger over farm conditions that they say are Pushing them into bankruptcy.Įscorted by policemen, the columns, each stretching for about a dozen blocks, chugged along Independence and Constitution Avenues, the normal thoroughfares of tourists, at the pace of a slow walk, blocking intersections and snarling traffic for more than an hour.
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