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The Government owes me the right to make a living and to change jobs if I want to. But my success should depend on my own initiative and ingenuity. The Government should reduce taxes and limit its activities to keeping peace, preventing monopolies and unfair business practices, promoting foreign trade and helping temporarily in emergencies. It should act as a referee in the contest between the different segments of our economy but should not be permitted to dominate any of them. I don't want in anybody's cage even if the bars are gold plated.

STATEMENT FILED BY GEORGE T. GIBSON, ANADARKO, OKLA.

I am George T. Gibson, Anadarko, Okla. I am renting 200 acres of farmland and have to run a small seed and machinery business on the side to help make a living for my family. I farm mainly small grain and alfalfa. I am a GI and a graduate of Okla. A. and M. College, as well as being reared on a farm and also a teacher of Vocational Agriculture for 6 years.

Since farmers have never been completely organized and in my opinion never will be completely organized, they must depend upon their Senators and Congressmen to enact legislation that will put them on an equal basis with labor and industry. We know that 100 percent of parity is that breaking even point; so why should we be given less?

We also know that we must have crop-acreage controls in order that our production may be controlled, but at the same time it seems that our imports on our basic commodities as well as on our minor crops and livestock is far to many for the best interests of our American farmer. Peanuts is a good example for our basic crops and castor beans is a good example of a minor crop.

Imports on each of these crops have cost the American farmers millions of dollars and we would like to ask you gentlemen to help us, and please do something about it.

STATEMENT FILED BY GLENN GIBSON, MINCO, OKLA.

Since the figures relative to our loan program has probably been given you by others I see no point in repeating them, but will dwell on a few other points. Honey is selling above the loan rate. None was delivered to Commodity Credit in the 1954-55 season and we have every reason to believe that none will be delivered in the 1955-56 season. It is my feeling that the following points are responsible for our present market:

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1. Since 1952 we have been actively promoting honey as an industry. USDA assisted us in 1952 and 1953 showing us the way. Each successive year this prorgam is expanding and will continue to expand.

2. Heavier than normal buying from foreign markets mostly Canada.

3. Short crops due to drought in 1954 and 1955.

The most encouraging sign of our time, however, is the formation of a Honey Industry Council, which has commenced to collect money for research and promotion. The stamp below is the means of collection:

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This means that 2 cents will be collected on all commercially handled money to be used for promotion and research.

Briefly I would like to suggest that new farm legislation support honey at the rate of 75 to 90 of parity. Each succeeding convention we have asked the USDA to support honey at 75 percent of parity but this has been completely ignored. I do not feel that Mr. Benson will change his mind in 1956 or 1957.

We need this support program badly until we can round out and perfect our promotional program and most of us do not feel that we are asking too much especially since we are progressing marketwise. Please give this your earnest consideration.

STATEMENT FILED BY JOHN H. HALE, PRESIDENT, TULSA COUNTY

FARMERS UNION, OAKHURST, OKLA.

PRICE SUPPORTS

We commend the Senate Agricultural Committee for coming to Oklahoma to hear from our farm people, what they believe to be fair arrangement for the farm folks. The folks that produce the food which every one must have to live. We know our farm families cannot live and continue to survive with a parity of just a little over 80 percent. Some say research is the answer. We heard this in 1952 and 1953 from the present administration and what we see is declining prices on the farm and no drop in prices (very little) in what the consumers pay. We believe in equal opportunity for our farm families, our family farmers to make a living from farming. This equal opportunity to make this living is wrapped up in the simple statement 100 percent parity for what our farmers have to sell and unless something is done to set this in operation our family farmers are on the road to extinction. They talk about efficiency in farming as the remedy. We want a price, a price that gives us 50 cents out of the food dollar. Efficiency in the processor over the last few years has meant how to buy for less from the farmer and how to sell higher to the consumer. We want to practice our efficiency under the same ground rules as the rest of the economy 100 percent parity.

STATEMENT FILED BY HENRY W. HASENBECK, ELGIN, OKLA.

My father homesteaded here in 1901. I live one-half mile from there. The homestead has been sold.

I farm 320 acres. I paid on the one quarter 32 years, the other one 22 years. I have lived here 54 years. In 1952-53 I was president of the Comanche Farm Bureau, Comanche County, Okla. I am still a director on the county board.

This is my second 3-year term as a director. The reason I am this is that the people (members) in the three-township district elected me.

I try to live and talk the truth. Sometimes this gets me into trouble with my associates.

I have never voted for, nor do I believe that the program of flexible price levels will work, except to bankrupt the smaller individual.

It is possible that it might work if all other goods and services were on the same basis.

The flexible theory, if carried to its logical conclusion, will finally carry farm products to the level of world prices.

It would be just as logical to protect raw products at a high level and then to repeal all tariff and import schedules.

I believe the American farmer can compete with the rest of the world. And sell his goods to foreigners.

And I am willing to take my chances with this doctrine, provided that I can also buy the goods I need in foreign countries and bring them home with me duty and tax free.

A processor of farm goods said to me, "We can buy every farm product, and ship it from a foreign country, cheaper than we can buy it from you right here in our own State."

So aren't we all silly? We are approaching the world market with farm products anyway, and if we go the rest of the way we can sell twice as much, they tell us.

Then we can buy every article made in the United States for a percent of what it costs here from foreign countries. Look, all our labor and factory and industrial personnel could go fishing or join the Army.

Or we can get smart and try to figure out some way whereby farmers can get 100-percent returns for the goods they sell so they can buy the things which our factories make and farmers need.

Just 10 years ago nearly all farm products were rationed. Many people seem to feel that farmers will never be needed again.

Every mechanic knows that we are never going to make a machine of any kind that never needs adjusting or overhauling. The farm program is no exception. Mechanics also know that a workman can get a mechanism out of order as well as adjust it. If we hire a mechanic to adjust the farm program and he doesn't want it to work, it isn't much of a task to get it out of order. There never was a law made that some smart one couldn't circumvent it. The law of God has been disputed in so many ways that it is pitiful. The mechanic who services your car will tell you that to make 20 small adjustments will do your car more good than a major overhaul.

To make this farm program run again let me list some of the 20 adjustments:

1. We need a new driver. The one we have takes the curves too wide. He is not easy on the wheel, he grips it too hard and is liable to freeze the steering in an emergency and wreck us. We have a Senator in Kansas whose name sounds more Hope-ful to farmers And he is a good administration man.

2. The second adjustment is not in the farm program at all, it is what I call the income-tax loophole.

Businessmen, who have income tax to pay, are picking up all the farms as fast as we get to old to work or die off. They can take the loss on a farm out of their other income, cost of labor, improvements, and a lot of things. Our Government helps them terrace, build ponds, pay for soil practices, price assistance on crops. They put every inch of land into cash crops, no family, no garden, no chores, Mexican labor if he wants it. This farming he is doing is just a subterfuge. We should not pay him to do it. It has become the largest national racket today.

3. These businessmen farmers have another racket almost as good as the tax loophole.

A leading magazine thought it important enough a couple years ago to devote 4 or 5 pages to it. They fraternize in their business and thereby get most of their needs wholesale, or nearly so. You know, "I have a little business here in town, I am a businessman, like you. I have a little farm I am fixing up, I give discounts to other merchants, I want to buy a few items for my farm."

All the while I am a bona fide farmer, a retail customer. We have fair-trade laws which would make it unlawful to discount to me I am trying to raise a family and make a living off of the farm. I don't own anything anywhere except this farm. And I am trying to buck this kind of competition, with prices at from 60 to 90 percent in relation to the things I have to buy.

4. Then I have mentioned that we import foreign labor to help him farm. 5. Maybe this man should be allowed to farm, he should do it on income tax paid money.

6. Farming is a sort of marathon race, not so fast but a long ways. For a young man to get on a farm there is only one way unless he has money from some other source.

He rents a farm, buys a couple cows, pigs, chickens, a few tools, marries his high-school sweetheart, works 16 hours per day, 7 days per week for 50 years and then we all say he is a good solid citizen.

A young man today can't do that. He comes home from college age 22 or 23, then 2 years in the draft, then 6 years on the Reserve list. He cannot safely start a farm career until he is above 30. Or the first little riot which starts in some foreign island he can be called out and the result to his farm venture is similar in effect to a cyclone or fire.

A young man on a salary, who is called to the service, can in almost every case step back into his old job when he returns, his retirement history is not interrupted, and very little salary loss.

There are 2,000 farms in Comanche County; we need 200 young couples to go back on our county farms every year.

7. We need to create an atmosphere in which young people can start on a farm with the same economic facility that these same couples could do in a salary position.

8. We can support 20 million new couples on our farms in the United States and we wouldn't be burdened with as much surplus as we now have.

9. For good measure I would like to throw in the suggestion, that, possibly in our lifetime, most of us are going to see the prices of all our products, raw and finished, somewhat comparable to world prices.

I believe that we are going to do this in 1 of 2 ways, either the good oldtime tried method of boom and bust, or maybe we are going to get smart and hire ourselves an equalization board and scale prices of everything, wages, products, debts, money, property, everything to where we can trade with the rest of the world without just giving it away.

10. I believe I can outfarm anyone that ever lived, anywhere. I believe our factories can produce anything, anywhere, just as good and just as cheap as any one else.

11. We are feeding more than 3,000 persons on free rations in our county. Some counties more. These people need some sort of jobs. We are giving our goods away to foreigners with both hands. We need to trade with them.

STATEMENT FILED BY CHARLES A. HOLLOPETER, BLACKWELL, OKLA.

The present-day agricultural outlook as viewed by many of our farm neighbors is indeed a gloomy picture as compared to other vital segments of our economy. This situation has become acute with the purchasing power of the farmer now to it's lowest level in many years. This has in no way developed as the product of any single element or group of conditions beyond normal production or marketing methods. This has been brought about through unnatural or governmental restrictions and controls beyond the war emergency.

No farmer has any desire to become a ward of any government through acceptance of financial aid. Farmers as a group have been proud of their contribution in the winning of the war. We were also told that food would also write the peace.

Now let's take note of the fact that no farmer or farm organization has ever suggested that we might strike in any form in order to attain or objective. This is not only impossible or perhaps impractical; it is not the American tradition to deprive any other group or segment of our population our God-given wealth of agriculture.

Farmers have been proud of their unselfish record in fostering legislation harmful to no other segment of our growing economy. Now that we can only speak for some 14 percent of the entire population, we find ourselves rapidly being fenced in by economic barriers. These barriers in the form of an expanding economy are favorable only to select groups which we look upon as selfish only to the end of attaining financial prosperity.

The minimum-wage law recently attained a new high. The so-called annual wage contracts of select groups (although no governmental parentry is admitted) has set up a new high in agricultural competition for farm labor. The fair-trade laws have in many instances established rigid prices on manufactured goods beyond the ability of the farmer to buy.

As we now stand, agriculture is the only segment of our economy where we cannot say but leaving it entirely to the consumer what he is willing to paywhat our products are worth. The goods we buy are priced beyond our reach, even if the raw material was produced on our own farms. Perhaps the most humorous part of this cycle of exchange is the sober expression that each added cost for labor or services would not raise the ultimate cost of this commodity. How long can we continue this Santa Claus economy?

Although it is not our desire to receive financial aid, it is imperative under existing conditions that the farmer receive similar benefits afforded labor and industry, for we are a part of both. We feel that such benefits should be in the form of production payments for basic commodities at 90 percent of parity until such time as all war-emergency inspired legislation has been repealed, and we can again emerge in a plane of economic equality on a free and unsupported market.

STATEMENT FILED BY ELDRED SASSEEN, CHAIRMAN, BOARD OF SUPERVISORS,
WASHITA COUNTY SOIL CONSERVATION DISTRICT, CORDELL, OKLA.

We, the undersigned supervisors and associate supervisors of the Washita County Soil Conservation District and farmers of Washita County, recommend the following agricultural program:

1. Not less than 90 percent of parity, Government-guaranteed support, on all basic crops, that "modernized parity" not be employed.

2. We recommend a limit of $10,000 of Government loan support to any individual or corporation.

3. We recommend crop allotments be graduated from a base farm of 160 acres. Example: Any farmer with his first 160 acres of cropland has the broadest base available, in order to protect family-type farms.

4. We recommend that no restrictions be placed on nonbasic crops.

5. We recommend that farmers who are dissatisfied with Government classification grades be permitted to have said cotton regraded without returning original grade to cotton classifiers, and that basic grade not be changed.

6. We recommend continuation of the present Soil Conservation Service, as it now exists, plus greater appropriations for this Service (we do not agree with the Hoover Commission recommendation concerning the reorganization of SCS).

7. We recommend sufficient appropriations to construct all upstream floodcontrol projects, as they are eligible for construction.

8. We recommend that a thorough, nonpartisan investigation be made to determine the cause of the price spread between what the producer receives and the consumer pays, and that these findings be widely published.

Respectfully,

Augie B. Sewell, Troy O. Phillips, W. E. Schanz, L. W. McDonald,
C. R. Boggs, Jim Carwonem, Frank G. Kliewer, Eldred Sasseen,
W. G. Nash, Jerald L. Vaniman, Henry J. Thisson.

STATEMENT FILED BY EMMERY E. JACOBS, SR., ARDMORE, OKLA.

May I introduce myself as the oldest dairy farmer in Oklahoma-April 10, 1916, to date. Purebred Guernsey since 1917.

I will give you only a few headlines, which I can substantiate with graphic drawings, needing only a 5 minute allotment which I would greatly appreciate. Parity, as desirable as it appears, is not our complete answer. With or with out it, we are still in bad shape, following the leadership of the last generation. Production, in which we have made outstanding improvement (greater than any other field in American agriculture) since the base period, is not the answer. The low stave in the dairy farmer's barrel, where his "golden gravy" is running out, is his inability to sell what he has for a profit.

His prosperity is not correlated with his efficiency.

If we are to follow the leadership of (1) the Department of Agriculture, (2) its extension services, (3) the agricultural press, (4) our colleges, in their teachings of blind production, we are likely to remain in the second rate, or poverty class, as described by our Secretary, Mr. Benson, in these same halls, when he told us of his early bringing up on a dairy farm in Utah.

I do not pretend to represent all the dairy farmers in Oklahoma, but I'm sure a very large percentage do agree with the foregoing as I have talked with them for years.

I do not pretend to represent the truth in Oklahoma dairy farming and the national industry as well.

I dislike being poor, when my cousins in town, with the same capital, education, and effort are prosperous. Especially it seems unfair to have the processor so very prosperous, while the general public still pays through the nose.

Suggested relief: Redirect all our energies toward ways and means of getting this profit. It is not anything but reasonable to me, that were all this ocean of brains, energy, money, and time redirected toward this end that we would get like results obtained in the production field.

Decision must be at the top.

(The exhibits attached to Mr. Jacob's statement are on file with the committee.)

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