the plumbing, appliance, lumber and construction industries as well as the financing concerns.

The State Department's aid to development of agriculture of backward countries will aid the development of markets for the products of other industries, but serves to reduce the world markets for agricultural products, while increasing the competition. At the same time State Department policy and legislation both favor the expansion of markets for the products of other industries.

Whereas most industries control the sale of the products produced by them, agriculture as an industry has little control of marketing and enjoys no similar benefit as is afforded by such control, e. g., the oil industry.

Farmers' fixed costs and cash expenditures to other industries are mounting; crop failures on successive years can now liquidate a farmer with a substantial investment and equity. The risk of farming has increased with the increased dependence of the farmer on other industries.

The farmer's income has been restricted by the changing times. No longer can he profitably raise a few fryers, the egg and dairy industry are now specialized to an extent that efficient operation is out of reach of a small farmer who would turn to eggs or milk cows during crop failures or as a supplemental income.

Truck and fruit as a source of income in our community is gone because of insects and competition.

Insects, competition and allotments have reduced the incomes for a small farmer from cotton.

Nine years without a corn crop has made the hog situation anything but favorable.

Grain and cattle are the mainstay of many general farmers in this community, their income reduced by allotments and low prices.

We need a program designed to make it possible for a farmer to make a decent living with an average investment of capital and effort, not one that serves to reduce the number of people farming, while increasing the amount of the capital required to farm to a degree out of proportion to what is the rule in other private enterprise forms of business endeavor.

I suggest that we first correct the trend toward riding the farmers with unfavorable publicity, and give the public a picture of all other supports, subsidies and tariffs and some idea of the relationship that actually exists, while pointing out that any support a farmer gets, requires first that he produce.

Secondly, we need a legislative program that no longer groups all farmers in one group, but treats the highly specialized phases of agriculture, where crop production is not involved, separately.

Third, we need a State Department program that will give more consideration to the present plight of the farmer, one that will require the industries that benefit most from the programs of tariff, foreign policy, and trade agreements to carry a proportionate share of the burden that is placed by these State Department activities on the farmers of this country, and one that will exploit the world market possibilities for agriculture as well as for other industry and not restrict them.

The farmer that raises a sow and 14 pigs contributes more real wealth to the economy than the man that tightens the same nuts on the left rear wheel of a vehicle on the assembly line for a guaranteed annual wage. Let's treat him accordingly.

Supports, subsidies and tariffs are our way of operating this great country; the farmer could possibly withstand the dropping of all types of protection as well or better than most people. We would not want to return to a standard of living that would result from a complete reversal of the trend for supporting the economy where it needs it.

Because he has done his job too well, we have the farmer paying a penalty.

STATEMENT FILED BY FRANK CONNER, KEYES, OKLA.

I homesteaded in what is known Cimarron County, Okla., in 1906. Been farming here ever since. I sold wheat in the 1930's for 24 cents per bushel. We had no support price then; but we had overproduction. We farmers are entitled to 100 percent of parity; we sure pay parity plus on everthing we buy. If we can get 90 percent of parity on our basic crops, I am very well satisfied with the program we have. Cut acreages till demand catches up with supply.

STATEMENT FILED BY J. H. CONNOR, BOISE CITY, OKLA.

I think that the farmer should have at least 90 percent of parity, or a price a little more in line with what he has to pay for the things that he has to buy to carry on his farming.

I think the summer tilled farmer shouldn't take any more of a cut than the full seeded farmer. The summer tilled farmer makes his own cut 50 percent or whatever it might be. Then he takes just about the same cut as the full seeded man.

I think the local farmers should have more say-so, quite a bit more than they have in their local affairs.

STATEMENT FILED BY MRS. CLARA R. DAVIS, GRIMES, OKLA.

Honorable Chairman, Senators, and fellow farmers, some people say anyone can farm; I say, just let them try. We have a minimum of $30,000 invested. To even keep our heads above water, we must be practical specialists in marketing, mechanics, soil conservation, and all other things so glibly termed by some as efficient farm management. It seems to me the farmer is too efficient when he can cope with the hazards of the weather, fight the insects in this bug age, and then come out with overproduction (or could it be poor marketing and distribution as well). Do you think acreage control is the answer when we put that allotment on our best soil then irrigate and fertilize?

Does any other business with similar capital investment sell on a wholesale market then buy at retail? How long do they think the farmer can continue that way?

Why don't we receive the same price any day of the week we might choose to sell a fat steer? Does the car market change from hour to hour? No, indeed. A list price is put on a car according to quality and design. Why not a similar deal for marketing our beef?

We are selling choice eggs now for 35 cents a dozen. Only 50 miles eggs are 50 cents a dozen. The farmer had the expense; who got the profit?

I wish Mr. Benson would change places with us for 1 year. It wouldn't take him that long to realize we cannot sustain the family farm with flexible price supports or rather "flexible price deports"-deporting the farmer off the farm by some 100,000 last year.

The congestion in our cities causes problems and great expense to our State and Federal Government. Half-day classes in many of overcrowded city schools are robbing our youth of education and causing juvenile problems. It would even help balance the budget if we would treat the cause rather than the effect. Pay the farmer a living price and keep him on the farm. We want action. We haven't found any banker willing to accept political promises for collateral. We are farmers by choice and intend to stay in business. We have the facts and figures to show how great the struggle really is to maintain the familytype farm. With the help of our Senators, Congressmen, our Divine Creator, and such farm organizations as the Farmers Union, we will win.

Proposal: Produce quality, not quantity.

Base allotments on estimate of a basic standard of living, then rigidly control all above that on yield per acre-per 100 chickens or animal units per acre. Pay on diverted acres according to an analysis of net profit per acre. Average farm in our county 320 acres; put all diverted acres in soil-building practices. In 1946 according to our annual records, we paid $1,000 for a tractor with 29-cent cotton, 22-cent beef, 26-cent hogs, and 45-cent eggs. Today the same tractor is $2,200, and our prices not higher but lower in most instances-24-cent cotton, 17-cent beef, 13-cent hogs, and 30-cent eggs.

Beckham County 160-acre farm has 60-acre cotton allotment. Mr. Ingraham in southwest Oklahoma has 120 acres cotton on 240-acre farm. We have 30 acres on cotton; 480-acre farm.

Base allotment on basis of cost of production and family living-farm operating costs or say it would be $5,000 per family. Basing allotment otherwise seems unfair. It costs just as much for us to live with only 30 acres as it does the man with 120-acre allotment. Set a base then rigidly control all above that.

64440-56-pt. 5-23

STATEMENT FILED BY WILLIE ELMORE, LOVELL, OKLA.

I am a small farmer. I have 375 acres of cropland and 260 acres of pasture. I am in favor of 90 percent or more of parity.

If there is going to be a change I would go along with David Foster of Kingfisher; that might be the solution.

STATEMENT FILED BY A. A. ENGELMAN, BEAVER, OKLA.

My age is 57. I grew up on a wheat and cattle farm in Wichita County, Tex. Came to Perryton, the Panhandle of Texas, in 1934 and raised wheat and cattle. In 1944 we moved across the line to Beaver County, Okla., and have mostly cattle now.

We have 6 children, 1 girl and 5 boys, ages 24 to 34. All the boys are engaged in raising cattle and wheat.

I firmly believe in the free-enterprise system that made our Nation the greatest agricultural and industrial Nation in the world, and in the future under this system, there will be opportunities beyond our imagination.

Wheat: In order to get back on a peacetime production, I believe the Government could probably make loans of 90 per cent of parity for the next 2 years on wheat used for home consumption. Also aid in cutting redtape and finding export markets for our surpluses to feed the hungry people of the world.

With the aid of Government crop and market reports, I believe that only the farmers themselves, on a voluntary basis, can reduce the acreage and bring wheat production within our needs, including a safe carryover each year.

I believe in orderly year-around marketing. This could be accomplished by the wheatgrowers providing their own storage on the farms which would eliminate speculation and dumping through the harvest period.

Cattle: The majority of cattlemen, small and large, have opposed all through the years any floor, ceiling, and all price controls. About 3 years ago they launched a beef-selling program that has been very successful and is stil going strong. Any move to put a floor or ceiling on cattle now, I believe, would cause the housewives to boycott beef and all our efforts will have been in vain. This would cause beef prices to drop drastically or like pitching a thermometer into a snowbank.

Research and conservation: I believe the soil-conservation department is doing a good job on permanent practices such as terraces, dams, grass and legume reseeding, and should be continued.

I think our colleges and research laboratories, through research in soils, livestock, crops, diseases, and so forth, are doing a good job and should be continued.

The soil bank plan has merits.

Price supports and controls go hand in hand and if continued, will eventually include all agriculture commodities and all operations would be under strict supervision of the Government.

I have every confidence in the agriculture people of our Nation to rally in any emergency in war or peacetime as they have done in the past.

STATEMENT FILED BY CHARLES M. EVANS, PERKINS, OKLA.

A FAMILY FARM PLAN

Large commercial farmers have been getting parity or guaranties on many thousands of bushels of wheat while the small farmer with a few hundred bushels, gets a much smaller percentage of parity. 100 percent of parity on not more than 2,000 bushels of wheat for anyone; or 10 to 15 bales of cotton for anyone: 200 or 300 bushels of peanuts and other guaranteed crops in proportion and no acreage control on anything.

Therefore the commercial farmer with large production of wheat or other guaranteed crops getting protection on only 2,000 bushels of wheat or other crops in proportion would not get any more protection than the small farmer, and anyone with more production would have it on his hands without protection. Governor Gary of Oklahoma wants the Government to spend $40 billion in super highways and not a word about soil or water conservation.

I think it should be automatic brakes for speeders and put the $40 billions or at least half of it for farm ponds and storage reservoirs for water including the Hells (mile deep) Canyon and others for irrigation and public power sites.

STATEMENT FILED BY C. PAUL FAUCHIER, NARDIN, OKLA.

Recent enactment of soil conservation legislation in the form of the HopeAiken bill known as H. R. 566 popularly known as the Small Watershed Act was by far a most commendable piece of legislation.

Farmers have long viewed the job of soil conservation as a bewildering task beyond their technical as well as financial ability. Now that local conservation districts have been accepted and respected for their part in bringing farmers and landowners into voluntary cooperation with their neighbors, this alone has greatly reduced the lines of responsibility.

We have long felt the need of joint responsibility in this overall job. We have been called upon as patriots and farmers three times in this generation to produce food for a war emergency. Each time we met the requirement. Our national soil resources were greatly depleted during each of these war emergencies. Each time it was the farmers' loss-that was, until the birth of the Soil Conservation Service. With technical guidance through local Soil Conservation districts, the average public citizen feels more and more a joint responsibility.

The farmers have joined field to field in a soil conservation plan. Neighbors working with neighbors have redesigned the patterns of nature for mutual benefit. Now the agricultural community emerges into a new patern. Here it leaves the local farm-by-farm picture and becomes "the greater good for the greater number."

The Hope-Aiken Act was nobly inspired to redraw the lines of governmental assistance to groups or watersheds of 250,000 acres or less to assist in creating a public service heretofore unknown. No basic changes in this law are needed. There were, however, many administrative details to be determined and directed by the Secretary of Agriculture.

One of these directives was the levying of cost to be borne in part by the farmers benefited by the erection of a flood prevention structure. This, in my opinion, is a public benefit wherein the value of flood prevention should be borne by us all. No large flood control structure erected by the Corp of Army Engineers has been paid for by the cities most benefited.

As the law is interpreted, only those farmers on whose farms a complete soil and water conservation program has been installed are eligible to receive this assistance. This is, I believe, a suitable arrangement, except for the fact that through a Department of Agriculture directive, the added cost of flood prevention structures must be borne also in part by the farmers benefited. We are of the opinion that this should be amended to free the farmer or landowner of this construction cost, providing he has completed his conservation program in a suitable manner as determined by the local Soil Conservation district.

STATEMENT FILED BY D. L. FREDERICK, POCASSET, OKLA.

I would like to make it clear at the beginning, that I have no personal grudge against the farm program we have had up to now. It so happened that back when cattle were high, I didn't have many so was using most of my land for cash crops. Since this turned out to be the base period, I came out with pretty fair allotments. So if anyone stands to benefit from a continuation of rigid price supports, I think I do. But I believe men should be guided by principles rather than the expediencies of the moment. That is why I am against rigid price supports. But that doesn't mean I oppose 90 percent parity. I favor having 100 percent or better still, 200 percent in the market place just like I favor having an oil well if I can get it legitimately.

I think the worst thing that could happen to our country is for the Government to own all the land and everything on it, including the people. That is communism and I don't want any part of it. The next worst thing is for the Government, under the guise of "all the people" to control these things while the people retain only titular ownership. That is socialism.

When I was a little boy, I asked my father if he would give me a certain milk cow. He replied, "Sure you can have her, just so you'll let me use her." That's

the way it is with socialism. The people own the property, but the Government tells them what to do with it.

The Government already owns millions of acres of land and acreage allotments have given it control of about a hundred million more acres. A lot of people are in trouble today because they believe in the liberty that is supposed to be guaranteed by the Constitution. Many of them have never accepted Government assistance of any kind, yet now they are in trouble for resisting Government domination of their business. I see an alarming resemblance here to the situation described in the Bible in Revelations 13: "And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth *** and he doeth great wonders * and decieveth them that dwell on the earth *** and causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark * * For what happens to those who have the mark, read Revelations 14:9-11.

If anyone would ask why I oppose something prophesied in the Bible, I would quote the words of Jesus Christ, recorded in Matthew 18: 7, "Woe unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses will come, but woe unto the man by whom the offense cometh."

Our

I am opposed to any plan which deprives us of our economic freedom. forefathers pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to the cause of freedom, and paid the price demanded of them. We are fools and ingrates if we trade our birthright of freedom for a mess of pottage in the illusion of guaranteed security. The record of rigid price supports proves what an illusion it is. Those who try to blame our present cost-price squeeze on flexible price supports certainly don't credit us farmers with much intelligence. Most of us know that the new program didn't go into effect until this year and prices are about the same now as they were last year. Flexible price supports have not had a chance to have any impact on our economy. We got into the shape we are in under rigid price supports.

Furthermore, I am opposed to any plan which is permanently based on historic acreage. Almost every farmer knows of someone who padded his report of acreage during base years and got a bigger allotment than he was entitled to. Any such program is continuing to pay a premium for dishonesty. It also places an unreal value of farmland. In some cases the allotment determines the value more than the productiveness of the land. Some farmers have bought poor land just to get the allotments transferred to their better land.

Fluctuating prices are an essential part of a free economy. They are the means of telling the producer what the consumer wants. The only other way of adjusting production to consumption is by Government decree backed by force. Freedom has given us plenty. Coercion has backfired wherever tried. I think we should profit by the experience of others.

During the depression when I was a boy, I noticed that the more prosperous farmers usually held their crops off the market until the harvest rush was over and then usually sold them at a better price. Most farmers, and my Dad was often among them, had to sell their crops as soon as harvested to meet current expenses. Then in 1929, a lot of prosperous farmers went broke due to the big drop in prices in so short a time. I think it must have been out of these experiences that the idea of flexible price supports was born. By making loans to farmers of, say three-quarters the expected market value of their crops after they are in the bin, you accomplish three good things. You enable farmers to market their produce in orderly manner, avoiding temporary market gluts, yet protect them from disastrous price drops as we had in 1929. While doing this, you can largely keep the Government out of the commodity business. Price supports would then be our servant instead of our master. They would be an insurance against disaster, rather than a fixed price for a fixed quota.

I see nothing alarming in the fact that a lot of young men are leaving the farm to get jobs in the city. This has been going on for over a century. It simply points out that farmers are producing more efficiently, and since there is a limited demand for food and fiber, fewer are needed to produce it. On the other hand, there seems to be no limit to the demand for the other goods which give us a high standard of living. So what is wrong with labor shifting to the production of that which is in greater demand?

If I remember history right, Studebaker started out making wagons and buggies. Where would we and they be today if, instead of shifting to the production of automobiles, they had demanded and received Government subsidy to keep them producing wagons and buggies?