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Mr. TILLMAN. That my present allotment is 23 acres. I would like to say my base on cotton was 56 acres

The CHAIRMAN. Before going to cotton, answer me this if you care to: Can you produce as much tobacco on your 23 acres as you did on your 85?

Mr. TILLMAN. No, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. You cannot?

Mr. TILLMAN. Definitely not.

The CHAIRMAN. How much less do you produce?

Mr. TILLMAN. Even on the basis of 800 pounds or 1,000 pounds per acre, you would have in the neighborhood of 80,000 pounds of tobacco on 85 acres. We have an exceptionally good crop if we reach 2,000 pounds of tobacco, and the average is far below that in the State. I believe it is around 500 this year.

The CHAIRMAN. What was the average per acre when the program started?

Mr. TILLMAN. About 800 pounds.

The CHAIRMAN. And now it is what?

Mr. TILLMAN. About 1500.

The CHAIRMAN. Almost 2 for 1.

Mr. TILLMAN. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. That is what I wanted to get into the record. Proceed.

Mr. TILLMAN. That is the State average.

The CHAIRMAN. I understand.

Mr. TILLMAN. Now the acreage on tobacco relative to the small farmer has been reduced and cut to where the allotment on the farms is not sufficient to take care of your present overhead and bear their part of the burden in diversified agriculture.

The CHAIRMAN. Would it be your idea to increase the acreage of the smaller farmer?

Mr. TILLMAN. I would like to get around to that in a minute.
The CHAIRMAN. If you would, where would you get it?

Mr. TILLMAN. I will get around to it.

The CHAIRMAN. All right, get to it then.

Mr. TILLMAN. I have an answer.

The CHAIRMAN. All right.

Mr. TILLMAN. The other basic commodities that we grow, cotton, peanuts, and so forth, have been reduced also on these farms. As a matter of fact, my last production of cotton was, I believe, in 1943 when we had an open year on cotton of 45 bales. Today my allotment on that same farm is 3 acres. My farm consists of 1,500 acres, approximately 1,000 acres of it is clear land, around 700 acres is either improved pastures or under cultivation at this time. We had an allotment on peanuts

The CHAIRMAN. Let us go back to cotton. How many acres did you have? Just answer the question, please. Let us not go to peanuts. How did you come to lose your acreage down to 3 acres? Mr. TILLMAN. We did not grow

The CHAIRMAN. Wait a minute. I want you to tell the committee how it was that your acreage was reduced to 3 acres-from what? Mr. TILLMAN. From 56.

The CHAIRMAN. You must have planted something else in the meantime.

Mr. TILLMAN. No, sir. We discontinued production of cotton during the period of time with the exception of 1943 that there was no quotas declared, because we were not able to profitably produce that

cotton.

The CHAIRMAN. So you quit cotton?

Mr. TILLMAN. We took a rest.

The CHAIRMAN. You quit cotton. You lost your historical base.
Mr. TILLMAN. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. Sure. That is what I wanted you to say.

Mr. TILLMAN. We lost it due to the fact that the Department of Agriculture declared those the base years and ruled out the history and performance of that farm.

The CHAIRMAN. You do not think it is right?

Mr. TILLMAN. No, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. If you quit growing cotton to grow something else you lose your base. That is what happened. That happened to a lot of people who are now

Mr. TILLMAN. If that policy is right I will also lose my farm as well as my allotments on that farm in the near future, including tobacco. Senator SCHOEPPEL. I want to say this, and I appreciate your situation. The western part of my State is a semiarid or upland area where we produce wheat. And in many places the only other crop we can produce there with any degree of return year in and year out is the grain sorghums.

The State agricultural colleges of our area and other areas have experimented and the farmers have, as well, on what is known as summer fallowing practices wherein we leave the lands lie completely idle of crops and cultivate it 1 year and put in the next year.

Now when this allocated acreage program came along there were thousands of farmers in western sections of the country who were following the best agricultural college programs, namely summer fallowing their acreage; leaving half of it idle, building up the moisture content, and seeding the other half every other year. The people who continuously cropped their land or put all their acreage in when this acreage allotment hit had a better history by far than those who followed good agricultural summer fallowing practices and had voluntarily cut their seeded land acreage in half for production pur

poses.

I sympathize with you a bit more than ordinary in your situation. Mr. TILLMAN. Thank you, Senator.

May I proceed, Mr. Chairman, by saying that the peanut acreage in our county was our county was declared a border county insofar as production of peanuts was concerned and due to that fact we have lost most of the peanut acreage in that country. It has gone into counties that were exceeding us in production and declared peanut counties.

Now I am not trying to bring this to you just for my personal benefit. I realize that the small farmer has felt the pressure of the farm program as administered in the past. I realize that you may pass a law in the future, a new program, and turn that over to someone to administer and if, as that program is carried out, the intents of the

law is not followed, surely it will not reach the small farmer as you have suggested in our hearing here today.

Now I am not up here trying to ask

The CHAIRMAN. If you remember, the law provided for a minimum of 5 acres for each farm.

Mr. TILLMAN. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. It seems that in many areas some of the farmers found it more beneficial to plant other crops than cotton and thereby lose their history on the 5 acres. Do you recall that?

Mr. TILLMAN. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. When a farmer who loses his acreage because he found it more beneficial to get into other crops, do you think it is fair to return it to him and take it from the fellow who stayed in it?

Mr. TILLMAN. Mr. Chairman

The CHAIRMAN. You can see the virtue of recognizing or trying to assist the fellow who remained in it and struggled with it as against the fellow who got out of it and wants to go back now.

Mr. TILLMAN. My convictions are that the history of any farm should be the basic factor in determining whether or not that farm or that producer is entitled to anything.

Now, then, when you get down to a period of rest taken or one of calamity like the drought we had a year ago here in Georgia, 1 don't think that those things should play an important part in the reduction of acreage of production in this State in the future. We run into that. I think that the administration of the farm program has gone far enough to try to find some way to sidestep these surpluses that they have overbearingly cut the allotments when it was not necessary to the individual farmer.

I would also like to say that so far as the small farmer is concerned, I want to be clearly understood about this because he has my utmost sympathy-I declare myself a small farmer-but I don't think that we are treating the farm program right or the small farmer right when we set a given amount of acres and say that he is entitled to that regardless of what happens.

Any reduction that would take place in the tobacco crop now should take place across the board. Before those reductions are made—I am offering this as a suggestion-before those reductions are made I think that the records of the AAA or PMA or whoever it might be should be carefully studied and the farmer put on the correct basis. That is the plan that I would make for the small farmer rather than the fact that he is entitled to something that the big farmer is not entitled to. The big farmer is entitled to his proportionate part. I don't think anybody should necessarily hold the umbrella over someone else. The benefits to be derived from the reduction of a crop are equal to both small and large farmers.

Let me also say this, which isn't always true, but the coverup of the small farmer is sometimes maliciously done. I mean this. We have in this State and many other Southeastern States a breakdown of farm operations into small farms. A large operator can have a multiple of small farms through the course of acquiring a greater acreage under your reduction program. Do you follow me?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes; and making it less productive for the small farmer.

Mr. TILLMAN. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. That is what you mean; buys them out.

Mr. TILLMAN. Yes, sir; buys them out or rents them out or finances the present owner on a share basis.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Mr. TILLMAN. So I think that the administration of a program, regardless of what it might be, should be followed up with periodic checks if necessary, hearings before your great committee-in order that these things will certainly be administered as they should be.

I am going to offer something here that hasn't been discussed. It is something that is farfetched insofar as I am concerned, and yet I would like to see your committee and other people become interested in a national holiday so far as farmers are concerned. I think that the suggestion has its merits. I think that if such a proposal was planned it would certainly have a drastic effect on the present surpluses and they would disappear in short order, and your national holiday would not take place. But in the event that those surpluses did not disappear-I don't know whether that is true of wheat, cotton might have to go that far, and tobacco-in case they did not disappear, I think that a part of this program should be termed a national holiday in the production of those commodities that are in surplus and I think that the maximum cut should be taken on those commodities in order that we might bring things in line immediately. I think that the acreage taken out of production certainly should receive sufficient rental payment from the Government and by the Government.

We are traveling, if I might say this, on a thin crust so far as agriculture in this Nation is concerned, and being a farmer I am thoroughly convinced that this crust will break through before you can hardly put anything into practice to save the day.

In other words, I think we need immediate action, immediate relief, immediate plans; and I think that unless some of the suggestions that have been made here today-I am going to wind it up by saying this-by the Farm Bureau, by the Bankers' Association, by Mr. Pace and others, unless those programs are put into action and put into action immediately, we definitely will feel the results in this State and in the entire Southeast and throughout this Nation. And I believe that the truth is going to rock this Nation when they are confronted with the facts insofar as agriculture is concerned.

Mr. Chairman, it has been a pleasure to appear before this committee. I want to say to Senator George, Senator Russell, and to our distinguished Senator from Kansas that we consider you one of the most important steppingstones in this Nation insofar as agriculture is concerned and we look forward to the results that you will produce in behalf of agriculture of this Nation.

Thank you, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. All right. Mr. Culpepper, please. Do you have any suggestions that will be of help to us?

STATEMENT OF BROOKS CULPEPPER, TALBOTTON, GA.

Mr. CULPEPPER. Mr. Chairman

The CHAIRMAN. Give your name and occupation.

Mr. CULPEPPER. Brooks Culpepper, Talbotton, Ga. I am a livestock raiser and timber raiser.

A few weeks ago I read in the Wall Street Journal an article by one of their economists. This article stated that due to the fact that the agriculture of this country only constituted about 5 percent of the economy that the rest of the economy could absorb it or forget it.

I was astonished at the statement. It shows that the thought in other brackets of our economy is not too sympathetic with the problems of agriculture.

A few days ago a friend of mine visited a packing plant in Atlanta, Ga., a large packing plant. He was shown through this plant, the operation, and this attendant related to him, "Now, we pay these men that bone this meat as high as $11,000 a year.' There is no 4 years of college or 4 years of training required to become a meat boner. I doubt him owning the butcher knife he bones the meat with.

But he shows you that we are enjoying a period of inflationary prosperity and unless this inequality of income between certain brackets of industry with relation to agriculture is corrected it will be very similar to the story of the institution for the insane that caught on fire by a wire shortage. The attendants went panicky and began to shove the patients out of the second-story window. Finally they came to the fellow in a padded cell and he was trying to get out and they opened the door and he ran and pulled the switch that stopped the conflagration.

I am afraid, gentlemen, that probably we are starting at the wrong side of the dam to stop the leak. Unless the higher brackets of our economy can see the plight, then it will be too late. I warn you gentlemen to rush to the switch and pull it before the conflagration comes down on us.

Do you recall 1929? I remember it. The result was disastrous. And history is repeating itself today. The greatest decision I ever made in my life was in about 1933. Cotton had gone below 5 cents a pound; corn was unsalable; cows were giveaway; timber was worthless. But I owned my plantation. I told my tenants, I said, "You can't live on my plantation any longer. I want you to move. I can't continue to lose money on the fertilizer bill, pay the tax, and feed bill." They moved. The old fields grew up in pine trees and I haven't recropped since, but I think it was the wisest decision I ever made when I told my tenants to leave my land.

Gentlemen, I thank you for the opportunity of appearing before

you.

The CHAIRMAN. How much land do you have?

Mr. CULPEPPER. Fourteen hundred acres.

The CHAIRMAN. Is the timber you are producing sufficient to give you a good livelihood?

Mr. CULPEPPER. Yes. The only thing is the livestock proposition. The CHAIRMAN. You have livestock?

Mr. CULPEPPER. Yes, I have about 125 head of beef cattle. Just a few years ago beef cattle were bringing, grass-fed cattle, good steers,

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