07/01/2015
True Delbert Morse, former Agriculture Department Under Secretary and an architect of agricultural support policy, was a fourth generation descendant of David Morse (who emigrated from Wales to New York in 1798).
Mr. Morse was born into a farm family near Carthage, Mo., in 1896. He started a 400-acre dairy farm to support himself at the College of Agriculture at the University of Missouri, where he graduated in 1924. Upon graduation, he joined Doane Agricultural Service in St. Louis, which provided farm appraisals, agricultural research and also had an editorial service that produced feature articles for farm publications. Mr. Morse became president of Doane in 1943, editor of The Doane Agricultural Digest and later the company's chairman.
During Mr. Morse's tenure at Doane, he also performed a study for an Arizona governor's committee that resulted in the allocation of Colorado River water to Arizona and led to the Central Arizona Project, a $3 billion venture that was intended to bring Colorado River water to Phoenix, Tucson and Arizona cotton farmers.
Originally a Democrat, Mr. Morse switched his party affiliation and became head of the National Republican Farm Committee for Dewey in 1948 and, in 1952, contributed to the Republican platform's farm plank. At that time, he became acquainted with Ezra Taft Benson, the Eisenhower choice for Agriculture Secretary, who picked Mr. Morse as his Under Secretary.
In 1953, he was confirmed as Under Secretary as well as head of the Commodity Credit Corporation, which provides loans to support farm prices. In that capacity, he was the chief United States delegate in negotiating international commodity treaties for wheat and sugar. He opposed government regulation of agricultural properties in the years after World War II, and warned about the dangers of inflation and speculation in farmland from the abnormal agricultural profits of that era.
See more Noteworthy Morses on our website at http://www.morsesociety.org/cpage.php?pt=91
The Morse Society is a tax exempt nonprofit dedicated to researching, preserving and sharing genealogical and historical information on Morse and Moss progenitors, their ancestors and descendants.
