MUTUAL SECURITY ACT EXTENSION WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3, 1953 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Washington, D. C. The committee met in executive session pursuant to call in room G-3, United States Capitol, at 10:05 a. m., Hon. Robert E. Chiperfield (chairman) presiding. Chairman CHIPERFIELD. The committee will come to order. Mr. WOOD. We will proceed, Mr. Chairman, with the point 4 program, Mr. Andrews being the chief witness. He wishes at the outset to make a statement on the subject of the tractor program, in order to clarify something that was unclear the last time he discussed it. Mr. Andrews. STATEMENT OF STANLEY ANDREWS, ADMINISTRATOR, TECHNICAL COOPERATION ADMINISTRATION Mr. ANDREWS. I would like to briefly comment on 2 or 3 questions and 2 or 3 notices, which the committee notified me at the close of the session, the other day, that I would be expected to talk about today. One of them, of course, is the tractor problem which the chairman brought up. I was a little confused when you spoke of Ethiopia the other day. If you ask me if we are buying tractors and sending them to certain countries, I would say yes. We are spending money in the direct financing of tractors in a couple of areas on a pretty large scale. That is in India and Iran. They are really a part of the program out there. We are buying tractors and bulls and jackasses and chickens and other things for quite a number of other countries, but mostly and chiefly for demonstration purposes or to go into a research station or a college or some field demonstration. The programs for India and Iran, of course, go back to 1951, before. they were placed under the Act for International Development, and when there was put into that record and put into that bill and into the appropriation for that year, a considerable amount of machinery. The impression was formulated that one of the parts of the point 4 program was to tractorize the world. That idea was knocked out, and I think wisely, by the Congress, and it was not the purpose, I think, of Dr. Bennett, and it is certainly not my purpose, to try to tractorize 2-acre farms, but in Iran you have a part of the world there that has very large areas, you have areas in Iran that look a great deal like the area around Ludbock, Tex. It is rich, it is land that has been overgrazed principally, and yet you have a country that will grow wonderful wheat, and yet you have a country that about half the time is chronically short of food. In this particular case when the Russians withdrew from Azerbaijan, they took with them nearly all the camels, all the motive power, and practically everything else that the people in that area had to farm with, and there was actual starvation of farm people in that area last year. I wish I had brought to this committee room this morning, the bread and the things that they were eating in that part of the world last year. It was chopped up and hammered-up straw mixed with potatoes, and it made a sort of a pancake which they cooked in a clay oven. We decided to try to jump from the wooden plow to the tractor in that area, and we did buy and are buying and are sending into that area, considerable tractors and the committee probably does not recall, but in the Senate last year, I told Senator Fulbright that if this appropriation passed and they gave us that, we were going to send those tractors up there. They are going up there. I will not say it is because of the tractors because frankly, most of them did not get there, but because of an operation in that part of the world last year, that Urbania has a bountiful harvest and is actually shipping wheat out of Azerbaijan down into the other parts of Iran. It was a combination of good circumstances, excellent organization on the part of some Americans helping some Iranians, and our getting some seed wheat in and getting a crop planted. In the case of India we are shipping tractors into India in the valley development part of that country. You can farm all right without a tractor, but when you go to bulldozing out stumps and cleaning up land that is being opened up in great areas, it takes heavy equipment. India is buying a great deal of it herself, but we are, as a part of the grow-more-food program out there, sending in a certain amount of this heavy equipment to clear up and prepare the land after the big dams and other things are being built. Back here is a picture of the Hiracud Dam which the Indians have been working on for 3 or 4 years. When this river development is finally worked out, it will open up 800,000 acres of land. Now, that dam is being built partly by basket labor. You see some basket laborers there carrying stuff on their head. This equipment down at the left is Army surplus, and I do not mind telling you that we sold it to India. It is about 40 to 60 percent inoperative right now because of lack of spare parts and the lack of knowing how to maintain it and that sort of thing. We have a technician on that general project, on the laying out of the land. We are putting technicians in there to help them repair and help them take care of that equipment and put it in operation and if the special economic aid provision of this bill is approved by the Congress, they will spend about $3.5 million for spare parts which will go into that machinery out there and will go into that particular thing. The objectives as we see it of the technical assistance program are to increase the productivity of the country and of the people, and to do the basic things that will make it possible for that country to run on its own feet. We feel by enhancing and speeding up the getting of this land into cultivation and getting people on it is one of the quickest ways to increase this capacity. Chairman CHIPERFIELD. Mr. Andrews, what is India doing for us? Mr. ANDREWS. Sir, I will have to ask the political people to make that statement. Chairman CHIPERFIELD. Or Pakistan? There is not one Pakistanian in Korea. Mr. ANDREWS. I will have to say this, sir: It is a policy, as I understand it, of our Government, to offer this technical assistance and technical aid to countries that want it and who need it and who are willing to try to help themselves. As the Administrator of the program, I simply say, "Where can we help?" and if we can help and apply something to that job, we try to do it, sir. I will have to tell you that I do not get into the political side of it. We do not dare to, sir. We are just technicians and we go ahead. Mr. Dulles, or somebody else, can possibly answer that question. They are giving us great quantities of jute and burlap. Several years after the war groups of farmers came up here to try to get jute and burlap which is the historical thing that the farmers use for bagging fertilizer and for their crops. We could not get it and the cotton mills of the country went into cotton bags at greatly increased cost. Now this jute and burlap is flowing at an extremely low price and our cotton people are screaming that they are losing a market. It has historically been a jute and burlap market. We are getting it in quantities larger than ever before. Mr. WOOD. Mr. Chairman, I think that the return to us from our joint efforts with India is something that is hard to measure in terms of material things. I think it has been the feeling-and it is obviously up to the Congress to decide-whether it is the right policy, as Mr. Dulles said yesterday in this committee, that India with its some 350 million people is an important area to retain in the free world. It is comprised of an important group of people located in a very strategic position. If they were not friendly to us and did not maintain conditions of peace and stability, India might constitute one of all too many threats to the free world and our own security. I think the basic rationale for special assistance stems from that general concept. I think we could talk a long time about that. However, I do not think it is necessary, unless the committee has some special questions on this subject, to go into something with which I believe the committee is quite familiar. We do get, of course, some sizable amount of strategic materials from India, but it is this broad concept of the free world and India's part and our part in it which, I think, underlies our interest in India. I do not know whether any of the people present from the State Department would wish to add something to that statement. Chairman CHIPERFIELD. You usually cover the subject very well. Mr. ANDREWS. I would like to make it perfectly clear what we are doing in this program. The Congress is the Supreme Court so far as we are concerned and if we are doing it wrong, we want you to tell us so. There are other instances where we are bringing tractors in for demonstration purposes where it does seem likely that tractors would contribute or make a means of increasing the food supply of the country. Bolivia is a country that has lived off of tin for centuries and years. Bolivia is right on the verge of cracking up at the present time due primarily to the fact that the market for tin has gone down, their mines have been nationalized to some extent and there is a bad problem down there. Yet in eastern Bolivia there is an area the size of Texas that is very sparsely populated and you can grow practically anything down there that you want to grow. We have, through the use of tractor pools in similar areas, shown how to clean up the small brush over that area and open it up to culti vation rather quickly and I imagine, sir, if the 1954 appropriation is put through for Latin America as it is now standing, that probably part of that appropriation might well go into Bolivia for tractors in the cleaning up of this great eastern area. That all involves this problem of supplies and support for technicians, versus the cost of technicians. Mr. VORYS. Mr. Chairman, is this a sort of general discussion of point 4? Mr. ANDREWS. I am answering this tractor question, sir. Mr. ANDREWS. I am following the bureaucrats practice of making a speech instead of saying yes or no, sir. I would say this, I know there are members of the committee and I know there are Members of the Congress who feel that this should be strictly technical, but it is my considered judgment that if we cannot back up our technical people in the field with a minimum amount of supplies to get these programs started, that we had better not send them out there because our own people will be frustrated, the countires themselves will be very, very disappointed and we simply will not get the things done as they should be done. There are instances where a pure technical operation of guidance and advice does suffice, but you will get quicker results if you can support that with certain supplies to get the Congress started. Chairman CHIPERFIELD. Sometimes the Congress gets frustrated too, you know. Mr. ANDREWS. We are all somewhat that way now, sir. Mr. VORYS. What would you say when supplies are 12 to 1 as opposed to technicians? That is about the way it runs through this bill. Mr. ANDREWS. I would like to put in the record the actual record of the supplies versus technicians. (The information referred to is as follows:) |