Benson was a Mormon born in 1899. In 1952 President Dwight David Eisenhower appointed Benson to the cabinet post of Secretary of Agriculture. Partly because of his vigorous espousal of free enterprise, he was never the most popular person in the cabinet. Still he was known for being fair, just, and a man of principle.
He was featured on the covers of Time magazine and The Saturday Evening Post, he and his family were guests on Edward R. Murrow's television show, "Person to Person." Believing that "no real American wants to be subsidized," he urged flexible price supports for agricultural products and called on America's farmers to stand on their own feet. Surprising critics, he survived a full eight years in the cabinet before retiring once more to home and church duties.
Passionately opposed to communism, Benson denounced all forms of tyranny and compulsion. He spoke out frequently advocating conservative positions and themes, and was mentioned as a possible presidential or vice presidential candidate. On one occasion he outlined his own political creed in the following words: "I am for freedom and against slavery. I am for social progress and against socialism. I am for a dynamic economy and against waste. I am for the private competitive market and against unnecessary governmental intervention. I am for national security and against appeasement and capitulation to an obvious enemy."
In 1973 Benson was set apart as president of the Council of the Twelve Apostles. He worked to streamline church politics.
In 1953, he (Benson)drastically cut 5 million acres from the national cotton allotment. The following year, he added rice & tobbaco to the allotment cuts in addition to furthur reducing cotton. Then he sent out teams of feds to monitor Southern farms then charged them for remeasurements & then charged them again to have committees destroy the overage. In some cases, for as little as .02 acres over.
It's been noted that he was particulary harsh on Southern blacks who had their allotments cut 66% or more making it impossible for them to harvest enough to pay bills.
In 1955, he came down particulaly hard on Southern grown rice. In many cases his fed agents included 'personal' vegetable garden acreage when measuring the shrinking allotments.
In 1956, he backed the 'soil bank' programs which paid selected 'landlord' farmers a shut up bribe for unplanted acres which actually had the counter result of putting even more farm labor out of work while the landlords he picked got a free government check.
The whole time all of this was going on, he pushed other socialist farm programs that assisted big corporations in setting up huge production farms in non-Southern states. Particularly California & Iowa.
By the time he was done, at least one million less Southerners were living on a farm.