Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

8. That the Congress take such action as may be necessary to reactivate and broaden the Federal crop-insurance program in order that the farmer finally may be protected from the disaster of the loss of crops.

9. That Congress appropriate additional funds for the expansion of the school-lunch program.

10. That Congress appropriate necessary funds for the undertaking and completion of the San Luis Division of the Trinity project urgently needed to supplement the water supply of central California farms; and that the Congress adopt and follow such policy and enact such legislation as may be necessary to develop such projects elsewhere in our land as they may be needed.

11. That the Congress revitalize and appropriate adequate funds for the expansion of the technical assistance program for aid to underdeveloped nations, particularly in respect to the employment of our own farm surplus in those areas.

12. That the Congress undertake a thorough investigation into the incredible and increasing spread between what the housewife pays for her food in the retail market and what the farmer receives for the same product harvested from the farms.

13. That the Congress support the United Nations world reserve of food with adequate funds and such contributions as may be necessary to maintain it.

One last remark in closing, Mr. Chairman. There are those that grow cotton in California and in the South that fear cotton production in Mexico. There are automobile workers in Detroit that fear the production of automobiles in South America. Let us pinpoint this in one single manner. If the 134 people of the world living on $2.50 a day were given 1 decent outfit of clothing or a cotton mattress to sleep on, we would automatically open up markets for 25 million more bales of cotton, and we are worried about a production of 14 million bales of cotton in the United States.

I thank you kindly for giving me this time. I know that your presence in California will lead to great improvement in the situation of California farmers.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

(The prepared statement of Mr. Lionel Steinberg is as follows:)

I wish to join other San Joaquin Valley farmers in bidding you welcome here, and to express my appreciation for inviting us to state our opinions and views on farm policies for your consideration.

My name is Lionel Steinberg, my address Post Office Box 1107, Fresno. I am chairman of the Fresno County Democratic Central Committee, and vice chairman of the California Democratic Farmers' Advisory Committee. I grow, pack, and ship fruits and vegetables, and I grow cotton and grain in the San Joaquin, Imperial, and Coachella Valleys. I earn my living from farming. Aside from my personal interest, it is clear to me, as it is to everyone, that agriculture is one of the most basic of all the pillars upon which rest our great economic and military strength. It is so important that at least 2 out of every 5 Americans gain their livelihood directly or indirectly from agriculture. Therefore, farming is an element of our economy and of our social structure which cannot be taken lightly.

The American farmer's efficiency is the envy of the world. He has produced an abundance of food and raw materials for the civilian and the military alike; and he has furnished immense quantities of food to prevent the starvation of our war-ravaged allies abroad.

Our agriculture, however, has not always been so productive. 1800, 85 percent of our people were engaged in producing food.

Actually, in
In 1910 the

situation was so improved that farmers constituted only 35 percent of our population. Today, only 13 percent of Americans live on farms.

We had always the natural resources and the climate, and the industrious spirit of a people upon which a great agricultural economy could be based, but it was only when our Government and our people undertook with enthusiasm the practices of soil conservation and replenishment, and of pest control and seed and breeding improvements, and the sensible marketing of the farmers' product, that our agriculture grew strong. While we were adopting the intelligent policies of the past 20 years, we were at the same time reclaiming lands lost to the farmer for want of water and by floods and erosion. As World War I came to an end, the farmer of America enjoyed a brief era of booming prices for land and farm products which lasted until the summer of 1920. Then came a debacle of tobogganing farm prices and land values.

In 5 short years, nearly 1 million farmers went broke. Agriculture did not share with industry the prosperity of the roaring twenties. So very severe was the situation that in July of 1922 a National Agricultural Conference was convened in Washington to discuss the crisis. At that conference, then President Harding told the conferees: "It cannot be too strongly urged that the farmer must be ready to help himself."

At the same time, high tariffs and virtual embargoes on many commercial imports aided and protected the industrial segment of our economy, and the trader. Then as now, the farmer-patient was sick, but the doctor's advice was like Secretary Benson's: "Help yourself."

In the interval between 1924 and 1929, the productivity of our average factory worker increased by almost 20 percent, but his pay rose only about 3 percent. In the long run, the factory worker and the farmer eventually came to suffer a similar position of degradation, and America suffered one of the worst catastrophies in our Nation's history. The Great Depression of 1929 was upon us, and prices fell to unbelievable depths. Wheat brought the lowest price in 300 years; corn sometimes less than 10 cents a bushel; cotton and wool went as low as 5 cents per pound; pork and beef animals were at about 3 cents, and raisins in Fresno were less than 1 cent per pound. At that time the average farmer's income was about 75 cents per day.

A study of our agricultural history, particularly that of the Great Depression, reveals the utter fallacy of Secretary of Agriculture Benson's theory that lower prices eliminate farm surpluses. When prices were low farmers mined their soil in a vain endeavor to keep their property. Agriculture never once slowed up the production process. Farmers kept on increasing production while industry kept on firing. Steel production went down 85 percent, prices down 1 percent; cultivator production down 90 percent; prices down percent.

Not only during the depression, but during the whole 12 years prior to 1933, the farmer was one of the forgotten men of the American economy. Then there was a change. A strong Government program commenced in 1933 to help farmers back to a position of self-respect and stability. This program included soil conservation, reclamation and flood-control projects, farm credit, crop insurance, rural electrification, farm housing loans, storage facilities, and the parity concept with high price supports guaranteed by law.

Broadly speaking, the major factor in the improved condition of agriculture was the willingness of the executive and legislative branches of the Government to provide adequate governmental programs to serve agriculture and the whole people through legislation and appropriations. The results of governmental action since 1933 enabled agriculture of the United States to tackle and to perform successfully every task the Nation has given it. When World War II ended the American farmers kept on producing enough so that food was able to become a major instrument of United States diplomacy. It was an instrument that did more than armies could have done to keep communism from dominating Western Europe.

Today, however, a Republican administration has returned to Washington and with it has come the beginning of another great farm depression.

In 1952, President Eisenhower campaigned throughout the country, and even visisted the San Joaquin Valley where, here in Fresno, on the courthouse steps, he promised not only the continuation of 90 percent of parity for our basic crops, but 100 percent. He went even further: he included the producers of the specialty crops within the light of his promises. It, therefore, was a shock to farmers in general when, upon taking office, the President appointed Ezra Taft Benson to be Secretary of Agriculture. He placed in that position of great importance to the farmer a man whose views were then, and are now, known to

be opposed diametrically to the laws and programs which the President had promised to implement and strengthen. Since the day he was appointed, Secretary Benson has set about with full disclosure and great deliberation to destroy the support program enacted by Congress in the Democratic administrations. He has said repeatedly that it is his intention to develop a long-range program more in keeping with his own philosophy of free enterprise; for example, he has taken the position that prices should be supported, if it all, only at such levels as will prevent actual disaster. He said he seeks to build an "uncorrupted citizenry, uncorrupted by action of the state." His philosophy rejects all of the progress that has been made in social security, the aid to the blind, the aged, and every other activity of government which seeks to improve the lot of its citizens, and the Nation as a whole. Obviously, such a philosophy simply ignores the facts of life and the complications and demands of this very new world in which we have found ourselves since the tragedy of World War II. The views of the Secretary of Agriculture, I submit, have been the expressions of the will of food packer processors, textile manufacturers, investment bankers, and of the middleman. They are certainly not the views of the American farmer. This has been nowhere more obvious than in the results of the voting when the farmers have had to choose between continued acreage controls and the loss of the security of the Democratic programs. In each case, even in the strongest Republican areas, the farmers have voted overwhelmingly to continue the programs of rigid price support with acreage controls.

The matter of our tobogganing toward a general agricultural depression is not a fiction, but fact. While the Republican press and politicians chortle that "everything is booming but the guns," the farmer has been permitted to suffer the greatest price declines since depression days. Net farm income is down 32 percent since 1952. In the past 12 months alone, grain prices have slumped 20 to 40 cents per bushel; and cattle, hogs and dairy products are off one-third. That, gentlemen, is a most serious situation, and there does not seem to be much brightness in the future if the present trends in governmental attitudes continue. Last week an economist for a New York investment banking firm calmed the troubled waters for those who took the farm crisis seriously as a threat to the entire economy: He points out callously that direct farm income is now only 4 percent of the gross national income, and that therefore the present situation should not disturb the rest of the economy too much.

One of the most insidious of all political actions that have been taken with respect to the farm program is the concerted campaign to set the city folk against the farmer, to make the worker think the farmer is a parasite bankrupting the Nation while living off Government subsidies and making food prices higher for the consumer. And at the same time turning the farmer against organized labor for increasing the costs of food processing. Actually, while wages have been consistent, farm prices have dropped 20 percent on the average since 1951, and meantime the cost of food products to the consumer has dropped less than 5 percent.

The truth of the matter is that while the farmer seeks parity prices, Government statistics reveal the farm income per person today averages only about 40 percent of the national average income per person, and the farmer's share of the consumer's dollar is down to 41 percent, a cent off the 1935-39 low.

It is argued by the Secretary of Agriculture and others in the executive branch of the Government, and even, in fact, by some Senators and Congressmen, that the farm programs are too costly for the American citizen to maintain while we build up surplus of farm products. Actually, in the 17 years prior to the inauguration of President Eisenhower, the cost of the entire farm program to the taxpayer totaled $10 per capita-less than $1 per year per capita-and totaled less than $1% billion. In the last year of the Truman administration price support cost only 40 cents per capita, or about the price of one hot fudge sundae. Moreover, it must be kept in mind that Federal subsidies to American farmers have consistently fallen further and further behind the cost of similar aid to American businessmen. Since 1949 Federal subsidies to business have totaled $5,880 million. Shipping firms, for example, received $150 million yearly; newspapers, magazines and advertisers, using second- and third-class mail, are annually subsidized to the tune of $500 million; and railroads, which enjoy huge sums in subsidy, have also been given 183 million acres of land, worth certainly more than $12 billion.

How many taxpayers are aware that the United States Government has pumped in excess of $5 billion into metal stockpiles, to bolster the sagging markets of only a handful of influential mining companies? The total invest

ment by the Government today in all agricultural products by way of our pricesupport programs is just about equal to that investment in stockpiling the metals of the mining companies.

How many taxpayers realize that in the last 3 years the banking interests dealing in Federal securities have received a subsidy of $1 billion a year through voluntary interest rate increases granted by the present administration? Gentlemen, in all candor, I say this: Farmers are no longer the uninformed poor slobs of the 1920's. We will not sit still long and endure the economic experimentation of the Secretary Against Agriculture.

The remarks of the Secretary of Agriculture with respect to his intentions concerning the agricultural programs, and the propaganda directed to the cost of price supports do nothing, indeed, to stabilize our wobbling agricultural economy. In fact, it is my sincere belief that primary responsibility for the collapse in farm prices these past 3 years can be laid at his doorstep. He should not be perplexed that he has required for price propping in 3 years nearly twice the entire expenditure of previous Democratic administrations during 20 years. Every time Secretary Benson or one of his assistants has made a speech on farm price policy, prices have dropped. Their actions have signaled a changing trend of major significance to all buyers and users of farm commodities to packers, processors, traders, manufacturers, and the middlemen.

The point I am making is that both buyers and sellers have lost confidence in the desire of the Government to stabilize farm prices. When that happens laws on the statute books will not prevent a devastating erosion of prices. Under the previous administration it was crystal clear that the rigid price-support program was being enthusiastically and vigorously administered.

The change was dramatic. During these past 3 years buyers have adopted a practice of day-to-day procurement, never knowing how far down is down under a parity system of sliding scales. Thus, for example, Commodity Futures Market Service Letters, and other grain and trade papers have reported time and again the bearish attitudes on the part of the buyers which seem to follow the inept remarks of the Secretary. Such a letter on cotton, dated September 17, 1953, reported:

"Speculative demand is very small and some concern is evident that Secretary of Agriculture Benson, in his speech Saturday, might upset the applecart insofar as confidence in the present price-support program is concerned."

A grain letter reported also in 1953:

"Early in the session (of the Chicago Board of Trade) there was scattered buying of wheat futures prompted by the rumor that Secretary Benson would soon resign *** a selling flurry late in the session followed Secretary Benson's denial that he contemplated resigning."

A Wall Street Journal article on cotton last month reported that Secretary Benson was "searching for ways to lower cotton support prices." Almost immediately the 1956 futures dropped 3 cents a pound.

My point on the part political attitudes play in instilling confidence or backbone in buyers was pretty well summed up by a commodity newsletter of a large brokerage firm commenting on price rise following President Eisenhower's heart attack. I quote:

"Several weeks ago we mentioned the importance of spotting the dominant factor. Does the dominant factor have to be a specific supply-demand condition? No. It can be an attitude: if commodities have been draggy and attitudes dreary-then all of a sudden attitudes start shifting and people generally become friendly toward owning commodities. This shift-ethereal as it is can be a dominant price making force."

I do not resitate to predict that Secretary of Agriculture Benson's resignation or removal would bring overnight a rise in farm prices and a restoration of confidence in American agriculture throughout the world.

The Secretary of Agriculture has a morbid fear of abundance. Indeed, in America today that is the greatest fear we must overcome. Unconquered this fear could become a creeping paralysis. It could prevent the future development of our resources of soil, forest, and water, and therefore prevent the expansion of industry and labor opportunities. Our so-called surplus today consists largely of about 1 year's reserve of wheat, corn, and cotton. The entire dairy products surplus could be disposed of, and the dairy industry stabilized, if we but gave our 38 million schoolchildren 2 pints of milk a day, for 30 weeks of the school year. Today, however, less than one-third of our schoolchildren enjoy the schoollunch program and the food they need in their development.

Lord Boyd-Orr, the first Director of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization said recently that it would take 10 to 12 billion dollars worth of food to relieve the hunger that is actually prevalent in two-thirds of the world. He said something even more significant :

"That is the lowest sum that can relieve world hunger, and if food is not provided, then hungry people ultimately will pull down all the rest."

I believe that the Secretary of Agriculture has failed dismally in use of existing legislation and in recommending new proposals to find customers in Africa, the Middle East, and in Asia. American food in those areas could do much to halt the spread of communism. The administration has lacked the vision to adequately utilize the technical assistance program (point 4) to build future trade and cash customers for the products of American factories and farms.

In this period of crisis for American agriculture there are many doctors around with various remedies. One group of these diagnosticians point to the growing cotton industry in Mexico and say that we must abandon or chop price supports and enter into cutthroat world competition.

The solution to our problems is not to force our American farmer into a dogeat-dog price war with 10-cents-per-day-labor in Mexico, India, and elsewhere, for that would be tearing down the very things we seek to strengthen in our land and in the world.

We must recognize that of course Mexico is going to expand her cotton production and that soon South American nations will be manufacturing automobiles. That does not mean that farmers in Buttonwillow, Calif., or autoworkers in Detroit, Mich., should shudder and shake with apprehension.

Our solution, rather, lies in taking a bold new look at the geopolitics of a world on the threshold of the atomic era. We must tie our farm policy together with our foreign policy, to the end that we can raise the standards of living and the consumption of the rest of the world.

The demand of the 14 billion persons now living on this earth on about $75 a year can become literally insatiable. Just think; merely providing a single decent outfit of clothing, or a cotton mattress for each such person would provide a demand for an additional 25 million bales of cotton per year. Yet there are fears and trembling in some quarters because our annual crop of cotton is 14 million bales.

No testimony should be so vehement as mine unless, in the end, there be offered constructive criticism and some definite recommendations. Therefore I submit the following:

We must adopt a sound farm program which will consider the long-range ability of our farmers to feed our growing population, effectively to strengthen the economic position of the farmer and the rural community. We must remember that our population increases by leaps and bounds, and that it is anticipated that it will have reached 210 million by 1975. Our farm program must recognize and account for all segments of the farm population: The family-sized farms, the larger commercial farms, their owners, operators, and workers, regardless of whether they be producers of staples or of perishables. It must provide for equality of the economic and the social position of the rural segment of our economy, with the urban industrial and business sections, realizing that the well-being of each is necessary in maintaining the economic and social health of the Nation as a whole.

Our farm program must provide for the orderly and fair marketing of all of the artificial surplus as well as doing something to forestall the possibility of actual shortages of farm products in times of emergency.

We must continue always to increase the productive capacity of our farmers and of our one basic resource, the soil. The program must seek to lower the costs of the production of agricultural products, and to aim always at maintaining the farmer's self-respect, building his social responsibility and broadening his outlook in general.

Specifically, I would recommend:

1. That marginal land brought into cultivation to provide for our war emergency be returned to grassland and to forest. Any money spent on such conversion is money spent on the future wealth of this Nation.

2. That the Congress should encourage the administration to utilize our food and fiber surpluses as weapons to be used abroad in fighting of communism.

3. That the Congress extend the 90 percent of parity support program for basic crops through 1958, and promptly enact legislation to aid farmers of perishable crops by the extension of compensatory payments to them.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »