Overreach by the government has a long history.
Stalin visits a nearby wheat farm to see how things are going, according to an old joke from the socialist and frequently undernourished Soviet Union. The farmer exclaimed to Comrade Stalin, "We have so many bags of wheat that, if piled on top of one another, they could reach God himself!"
"But God does not exist," the tyrant retorted passionately. The farmer responded, "Exactly!" "And the wheat doesn't either." The farmer's fate is unknown, but at least Stalin passed away in 1953.
Wheat has a bad rap from Soviet socialism because of its compelled collectivism and pervasive bread lines. It was quite terrible at agriculture in general. A quarter to a half of all produce was produced on small privately owned plots, which only made up three percent of the land, as observed at the time by journalist Hedrick Smith (author of The Russians) and many other authority. Agriculture in collectives was a joke.
When it comes to jokes about wheat, America is not immune. We live in a nation where sliced bread was both created and outlawed, and where it was decided that growing wheat for personal consumption qualified as "interstate commerce" subject to control by faraway officials. I'm serious.
It is appropriate to recall these long-forgotten historical details on this anniversary, July 7, of the inventor of sliced bread's birth in 1880 and the day in 1928 when the first loaf of bread made by his machine was sold.
Otto Rohwedder, a jeweler and inventor from Iowa, turned 48 on the day the first customer bought something made using his brand-new slicing machine. The bread immediately became known as "the greatest thing since sliced bread" and was marketed as "the greatest advancement in the baking industry since bread was wrapped." Before 1928, American housewives had to cut off every piece of bread from the loaves they prepared or purchased, which resulted in many finger injuries. Sliced bread became popular right away.
Seven patents were obtained by Rohwedder for his creation. In Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian Institution proudly exhibits the original. He most likely earned a lot more money with the bread slicer than he ever did from his jewelry business. At the age of 80, he passed away in 1960.
Let's introduce Claude Wickard, who served as Franklin Roosevelt's secretary of agriculture from 1940 until 1945. He prohibited the sale of sliced bread on January 18, 1943. It's unclear why exactly, but the most likely explanation was to conserve wax paper and other materials for use in making weapons of war. Two months later, he lifted the restriction, stating that "the savings are not as much as we expected."
Hitler and Hirohito must have felt relieved.
A significant Supreme Court ruling from Wickard v. Filburn, which was issued in November 1942, involves Wickard in another case of wheat folly. In order to "stabilize" supplies and prices, the federal government under Roosevelt decided to restrict the production of some commodities, such as wheat. This should be translated as "to reduce supplies and raise prices."
Roscoe Filburn, an Ohio farmer, was charged with breaking the rules by cultivating more wheat than was permitted. He grew the wheat for his own livestock, not to sell. The challenge was: Given that his wheat production never actually engaged in interstate commerce, could the federal government nevertheless control it in accordance with the Constitution's Interstate Commerce Clause? The Court concurred in a dubious line of reasoning after the regulators said yes.
Prior to World War II, FDR's Agricultural Adjustment Act, which included the Smoot-Hawley Tariff and the Federal Reserve's monetary contraction, authorized the slaughter of healthy crops and cattle in order to boost prices. Farmers complained about how difficult it was to get their mules to trample the crops despite their training to walk between the rows in accordance with the AAA. Although the Court sensibly rejected the AAA, by 1942, the majority of the justices were FDR appointees who had more in common with Big Brother than mules did.
The Wickard v. Filburn ruling significantly increased the federal government's authority over almost everything. Previously, "interstate commerce" referred to trade between states, as the name might imply. After November 1942, it basically referred to everything that could have an indirect impact on interstate commerce, including non-commercial conduct. The Court argued that if Filburn utilized his wheat for his own livestock, he wasn't purchasing it from other growers and thus wasn't influencing market supply and pricing.
What about the fact that Filburn's wheat production was so meager that his absence from the market had no bearing whatsoever? The Court attempted to absolve itself of responsibility by stating that the repercussions could conceivably be significant if many individuals ever did what Filburn was doing (or not doing).
"Even if appellee's activity is local," Justice Robert H. Jackson stated in his opinion, "and even though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce."
This was judicial activism at its purest, overstepping the bounds of the Constitution. Why even have a "commerce clause" if the federal government can determine that you are engaging in trade, whether it is intrastate or otherwise? What the Founders intended as a precise and constrained reason for the federal government's engagement in trade suddenly became wide enough to accommodate an army.
Even The New York Times raised concerns about the growth of federal power:
If the farmer who grows feed for consumption on his own farm competes with commerce, would not the housewife who makes herself a dress do so equally? The net of the ruling, in short, seems to be that Congress can regulate every form of economic activity if it so decides.
Some 15 years ago, William Mellor and Robert Levy co-authored a revealing book titled The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom. Wickard is among the nefarious decisions they zeroed in on, and deservedly so. In his Foreword to the book, Richard A. Epstein opines,
By extending federal regulatory authority to nearly every productive economic activity, Wickard eviscerated the principle that the federal government has only those powers expressly granted to it in the Constitution. And for this reason: to sustain an ill-conceived cartel whose chief purpose was to keep the domestic price of wheat close to three times the world price.
Only government, it seems, can take the staff of life and transform it into the butt of jokes.
