Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2545

Letter to Miss Elsie Mumma, Mumma Farm, Hummelstown, Pennsylvania, March 30, 1957, regarding her letter to Congressmen of March 15, 1957, appended hereto, and lastly a letter from Miss Mumma’s lawyer, Andrew Wilson Green, 603 North Front Street, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,

April 5, 1957

 

Dear Miss Mumma:

I have been greatly impressed by your wonder­ful letter to Messrs. Martin, Clark and Mumma in Congress. Your letter is beautifully written and with a great deal of force. We are all fortunate in having people like you to stand up for their rights for themselves and for all of us. There should be thousands of us to back you up and give you all the aid you need for success.

 From the long-term, philosophic view, we must all realize that we are only in one stage of a progressive evolution towards freedom of the individual, and that our positive progress depends on our under­standing of the potentials of our free-enterprise system, and through understanding it, promoting its growth into wider fields of non-political organization and functioning through exchange of services among ourselves. When we understand free enterprise as a developing system capable of taking over and making money out of the necessary public services that are now so deplorably performed under coercive authority, we shall be able to make much more enlightened pro­gress out of the present morass.

 The little leaflet I enclose may give you some inkling of thoughts in that direction. If it should interest you, I would be glad to furnish more along the same line.

 Again my congratulations on your fine stand. Please accept the enclosed check for ten dollars by way of my own modest aid and appreciation in your valiant stand.

Sincerely yours,

 

SH/m

Encls: Check for $10

  Purposes

  Society and Its Services

       Notes on the Organization

of Real Estate

      

___________________________________­­­___________________

  ELSIE MUMMA

MUMMA FARM

HUMMELSTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA

 

March 15, 1957

 

Sen. Edward Martin

Sen. Joseph S. Clark

Hon. Walter M. Mumma

Washington 25, D. C.

Gentlemen:

I am writing you because you represent me in Congress.

 As you may know from the press, the Supreme Court of the United States refused to grant my petition for certiorari challenging the constitutionality of the wheat quota provisions of the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938. I think it is time that you Congressmen repealed this unconstitutional legislation. If you didn’t know, I think you should be reminded again that under our present law it is held that a farmer cannot even raise wheat to feed himself on his own farm. I just wonder where the Constitution says that a farmer must starve to death on his own farm. I don’t think that involves interstate commerce, and what’s more, you Congressmen and the Judges know that the decisions of the Supreme Court are not in accord with the Con­stitution.

 As long as I keep peace with my neighbors and pay my taxes, my land should be my own to do with as I see fit.

 My lawyer tells me that the Government has a judgment against me in the amount of $403.20 and I understand that the Government, to collect this, can sell my farm which has been in the family by direct descent since the early 1700s, and on which my cousin, Congressman Mumma, was born. I understand there are a lot of other farmers in the same predicament and I think that Congress ought to pass a law, which you should introduce, to forgive the farmers for these judgments which have been entered against them. In my situation, I planted six acres of all wheat in 1954, and the balance was in mixed seeds as re­quired by crop rotation, but the Government snoopers, by aerial photo­graphs, charged me with planting twenty-four. Of course I am not going to let these Government agents on my farm without a warrant. What kind of a country do we live in any more, Soviet Russia? And I suppose you know that under the latest regulations, these agricul­tural snoopers don’t need a warrant to break into any farmer’s barn or cellar to look for illegal wheat. I understood we fought the American Revolution to get rid of this sort of thing. Anyway, I demand that you, my representatives in Congress, introduce a law to reimburse me and other family farmers for these penalties which have been assessed against us as a result of laws which are wrong both in the sight of God and under the Constitution.

 You ought to know that the result of these agricultural laws is to destroy the family farm system in Pennsylvania in favor of the large absentee-owner, factory-type farm which has to depend more upon speculation in agricultural prices. Do you represent the Pennsylvania farmer or not? The result of our present agricultural laws is to create a collective-farm-type system as in Soviet Russia, and these laws are the first step so that we can get all American farms into the hands of large corporations which will make it easy for them to be taken over by the American Soviet which, as you know, was planned by Communists in the U. S. Department of Agriculture in the 1930s.

 What are you going to do about it gentlemen?

Sincerely yours,

Your Constituent,

(Miss) Elsie Mumma

____________________________________________________

 

Dear Mr. Heath:                            April 5, 1957

Miss Mumma asked me to write you and thank you for your contribution and your letter. She also wanted me to say that I had helped her in the draft of her letter to the Congressmen which you liked.

 

Sincerely yours,

(signed) Andrew Wilson Green

 

AWG:vlb