196 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



Mr. PoAGE. Surely. 



Mr. White. Do you not think the controls on the big people 

 should be inflicted through the cutting down of their acreage quotas? 



Mr. PoAGE. Of course. 



Mr. White. Rather than trying to do it pricewise, because when 

 you attempt to do it pricewise you simply lose control of the commod- 

 ity which you are trying to control in price. 



For instance, suppose the big people produced roughly 10 percent 

 of the cotton. Obviously that throws that 10 percent of the cotton 

 into a free market and at the very time when the Government is 

 trying to maintain the price, that cotton is thrown onto the market 

 in competition with what the Government holds and forces the Gov- 

 ernment to pay months of canying charges and eventually breaks the 

 market down below the figure at which the Government could get out 

 even and finally wrecks the very thing that the Secretary of Agricul- 

 ture is trying to accomplish, namely, price stabilization. 



Mr. PoAGE. That is right. When we take this 1,800 units and 

 apply it to cotton, you have $140 a bale, which is the support price. 

 You are running into a pretty substantial amount of cotton for every- 

 body then. 



You cannot say that you have to include this fellow in a support 

 program because he had his cotton acreage cut 20 percent but still 

 produces more than l.')0 bales of cotton. He was not cut down to 

 where he was not making a living. One hundred and fifty bales of 

 cotton at 27.99 cents, at which price you propose to support that 

 cotton, certainly is going to buy shoes and clothes for a pretty big 

 family. It is certainly going to put the man who produces that 150 

 bales at 28 cents in a pretty big sized class. He is not going to be any 

 small farmer when he has that kind of production. You have not 

 denied that man an opportunity to make a living by cutting his 

 acreage. 



You have simply thought that by cutting his acreage we will try to 

 keep his price up to such an extent that he will make as much as if he 

 had planted all his land. This program is never going to deny a man 

 who can make 1 .800 of these farm units the opportunity to make a 

 living. Those acreage controls do cut the man who cannot make 10 

 bales of cotton, who does not have enough acreage to produce enough 

 to feed and clothe his family. Those acreage controls do hurt him 

 terribly and run him out of business, ofttimes. But they never 

 broke a man who was in the big time production. 



Secretary B.rannan. May I say, Mr. Chairman, if the committee 

 wants to go ahead and do some of the things that are being intimated 

 here, I am not suggesting that you do not. 



Mr. White. If I may interrupt, Mr. Secretary, I do not recommend 

 that they limit acreage or production quotas to 1,800 units, but I am 

 simply saying that if they want to provide a stable price level, the 

 suggestion that I made of control through production limitation is a 

 better method of approach than removing the price support on part 

 of the production. 



The Chairman. That, Mr. Secretary, could be done by amending 

 the law we now have, could it not? 



Secretary Brannan. That is right. 



The Chairman. Mr. Andresen. 



